Word: highest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Holton adds, "If Einstein's ideas are really naive, the world is really in pretty bad shape." Rather it seems to him that Einstein's humane and democratic instincts are "an ideal political model for the 21st century," embodying the very best of this century as well as our highest hopes for the next. What more could we ask of a man to personify the past 100 years...
...insisted that America could not fight racism abroad while tolerating it at home. It was Eleanor who championed the movement of women into the work force during the war. Many joined her in these efforts--civil rights leaders, labor leaders, liberal spokesmen. But her passionate voice in the highest councils of decision was always influential and often decisive...
When Dante Alighieri compiled his great medieval Who's Who of heroes and villains, the Divine Comedy, the highest a non-Christian could climb was Limbo. Ancient pagans had to be virtuous indeed to warrant inclusion: the residents included Homer, Caesar, Plato and Dante's guide, Vergil. But perhaps the most surprising entry in Dante's catalog of "great-hearted souls" was a figure "solitary, set apart...
...turn, has led to our obsession with ultraprecise timekeeping and time management. Before the Industrial Revolution, the exact time of day or year mattered only to those in specialized jobs, such as astrologers and sailors. For the rest, the day began at dawn, noon was when the sun was highest in the sky, and sunset wrapped things up. Says Carleen Stephens, who curated the Smithsonian show, in 1790 fewer than 10% of Americans had a clock of any kind in their homes, and most of those had no minute hand...
Then came trains and factories, and with them the need to coordinate the schedules of hundreds and even thousands of people. It was the railroad companies that invented time zones, in 1883. Because of the earth's rotation, the sun was highest at different times in New York City and, say, Washington, which lay a bit farther west. The 11-min. difference in local noon could lead to disaster at intersections...