Word: grasp
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reason why it cannot do so on earth if only it has the will. In 1893, Historian Frederick Jackson Turner described the American qualities born of frontier life: "That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom." All this could be applied to causes even more arduous-and at least as worthy-as reaching the moon. But it can happen only with the help...
Passionate Urge. Wells, in one of his favorite words, had the "woosh" of a man who judges everything to be within his grasp. When his first wife proved a sexual disappointment, he took a second. When the second wife proved a superb hostess-manager-but another sexual disappointment-he kept her and took mistresses, including the novelist Rebecca West, who in 1914, when she was 22 and he was 48, presented him with...
Immediate Landmark. Born in Berlin in 1883, trained there and in Munich, Gropius was quick to grasp the liberating potentials of fast-developing technology. In 1911, he designed with Adolf Meyer a shoe factory in Alfeld, Germany. Unlike most buildings of the time, which were held up by thick exterior walls, the structure was supported by Bessemer steel interior columns and beams and faced with a breathtakingly thin curtain of glass. It was bold, light, airy-an immediate landmark. Soon after, Gropius produced another tour de force: a machine factory in Cologne whose facade was dominated by a pair...
...relic, really, of a classic blunder. Perdomita Britannia et statim omissa, noted Tacitus scornfully-"Britain was conquered and then thrown away." He blamed the Emperor Domitian, who in A.D. 84 suddenly ordered his brilliant field commander Agricola to return to Rome just when a wholly Roman Britain seemed within grasp of the legions. Thereafter, year by year, the troops that had pressed nearly to the top of Scotland fell back under guerrilla attacks from the Britons. At last, in A.D. 119, Rome decided to stem the retreat and make the best of things by building a wall...
...beaten 'im before," Newcombe mused. "Bu' oy can'ht 'it wi' im froom the byseloine. oy naid..." Newcombe here waved his hand aimlessly, as if trying to grasp an unattainable secret to break Leaver's power. And immediately after the singles match, he'll have to pair with Roche to face Laver and Pancho Gonzalez in the doubles final...