Word: glitched
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...something strange was going on in Hackensack, N.J. Starting in February, hundreds of people were lining up at pay-phone booths all over town, chatting for hours at a time. A two-week investigation by local police and New Jersey Bell uncovered the cause of that loquaciousness: a computer glitch that allowed 400 pay phones in the Hackensack area to be used for worldwide conversations without costing the caller a cent. After bugging selected phones, the authorities realized that almost half the international calls placed in an eight-week period bypassed the operator and went directly overseas. Most people...
Even then the onboard computer, sensing the slightest glitch, could still abort a launch. As it happened, Resnik had been aboard the shuttle Discovery in June 1984 when, four seconds before the spacecraft's three main engines were to ignite for lift-off, the computer noted that the thrust from one of them was not at the proper level. The fuse was immediately pinched...
...talk-show host was Ali Hamdan, a well-groomed representative of the Lebanese Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite faction that had in effect hijacked the hostages from their original hijackers, the two brutal gunmen who had seized TWA's Flight 847 and murdered Navy Diver Robert Stethem. The only glitch in this presentation occurred when reporters and cameramen got into a shoving match as they jockeyed for position. Quickly, the Shi'ite guards hustled their prizes from the crowded room in the Beirut airport, waving pistols and cuffing a few reporters for good measure. When the press settled down...
...Inaugural's most noted glitch, also involving entertainers, was finally resolved to general satisfaction. Inauguration committee officials agreed to pay three times the minimum union scale of $125 to each of 200 youthful performers who had answered an ad to appear in Inaugural programs in return for expenses only. The use of freebie talent was loudly decried by three performers' unions, including the Screen Actors Guild, whose president at one time was a Hollywood star named Ronald Reagan. Worse yet, the ad specified "clean-cut, all-American types," which some took to mean whites only. In the end, the marchers...
...only glitch in their tour came at the end, when Bert Lance, the Georgia politico who was expected to help the Democratic ticket in the South, announced he was resigning his three-week-old job as general chairman of the campaign. On the eve of the party's convention last month, Mondale had tapped Jimmy Carter's former Budget Director, who had been indicted and then cleared of charges of bank fraud, to head the Democratic National Committee. When a storm of protest blew up over the choice, Lance was shifted to an ill-defined political post...