Word: mad
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...potlatch roared to a climax with a prodigious distribution of goods. For a less arrogant, less competitive people, this might have been only a pleasant custom, but for the tribes living an easy life in the mild, rich country between Vancouver and Yakutat Bay, Alaska, the feasts turned into mad giveaway races. Each "gift" was in effect a double dare: to save face, the guest had to reciprocate, usually within a year, with another gift of double the value...
Floating Cabins. In Winsted, Conn, (pop. 9,000), the serene little Mad River suddenly smashed through the town and isolated it for two days. In Farmington, Conn., little Patricia Ann Bechard drowned when a rescue boat capsized while her horrified mother, Mrs. Leon Bechard, clung to her baby daughter and watched helplessly. A Farmington fireman lashed five-year-old Linda Bartolomeo to a tree, was washed into the floodwaters himself, and later rescued. Red Cross officials found the child safe, 30 hours later. In Seymour, Conn, and Woonsocket, R.I., the floodwaters ripped through cemeteries, uprooted coffins and sent them bobbing...
...designing and developing new nuclear weapons. He directed the Sandia lab's expansion from 4,500 to 5,500 workers, did an outstanding job directing new developments-"without raising his voice or even his eyebrows." Said an associate, Physicist Norris Bradbury of Los Alamos: "I never saw him mad." President Quarles walked to work at the base so early that a resident who had never met the boss snorted: "I wonder who he's trying to impress?" Two years ago, taking his $10,000-a-year irrevocable pension from Western Electric, he quit to become Assistant Secretary...
...Mad, Of Course. Away from boats and drawing board, Uffa Fox pounded out a series of brisk, popular how-to-do-it books on sailing that immensely boosted the sport's popularity. For all his success, Uffa's carefree bookkeeping and happy-go-lucky pub-crawling soon separated him from both wife and boatyard. In World War II. though, he became the Air Ministry's darling when he conjured up a parachuting, self-righting, self-bailing life raft for airmen downed at sea. He demonstrated its effectiveness one midwinter day by stripping before startled British brass...
...tour the pubs like a Roman emperor, borne by two sturdy porters and accompanied by an umbrella-toting neighbor. Uffa's friends and professional competitors tend to agree with one Cowes oldtimer: "Uffa's a fine chap-a genius, none better-but, of course, he's mad...