Word: madrid
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...almost equal terms with their clients-Paul-César Helleu, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Anders Zorn. In England and America, the most successful of all these virtuosos was John Singer Sargent, who became to the British Empire what Velásquez had been to the Habsburg court of Madrid or Sir Anthony van Dyck to Charles I: the official portraitist par excellence, the unrivaled chronicler of male power and female beauty at the top of the social heap. Sargent paid the penalty of success after he died in 1925. Reputations like his were exactly what the English defenders...
...American plate and the adjacent Pacific plate are grinding horizontally against each other as they move in opposite directions. When friction causes these plates to stick, stresses build up that are eventually released in a quake when the rock suddenly fractures and the plates lurch ahead. Yet the New Madrid area lies in the very heart of the North American plate, far from its boundaries. Why should it have shaken so violently in the early 1800s and, in fact, continued to quiver occasionally ever since...
...Geological Survey scientists mapped only a small section of this fault zone-in Arkansas' Mississippi and Craighead counties-but they suspect it continues north for some 100 km (62 miles), through Arkansas and northwestern Tennessee. There the fault system veers off past New Madrid and probably continues into southern Illinois. In all, the scientists count about half a dozen associated faults, although their data are still sketchy. Says St. Louis University Geophysicist Sean-Thomas Morrissey: "You can't go out and stick your finger in the fault like in California...
...discovery of these faults is of far-reaching significance. For the first time, scientists are linking earthquakes in the New Madrid region to specific features in the earth's crust. That means they should be able to measure these movements and perhaps ultimately even forecast future large quakes. Is another monster New Madrid quake likely? Seismologist Otto Nuttli of St. Louis University has no doubts. Says he: "Pressure is building up all along the fault. That's why we're having small earthquakes. The little ones are symptomatic of the stress. They are not relieving it. Everything...
...quake does strike soon, it will cause far more damage than its 19th century predecessor. A new study by the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City estimates that a nighttime New Madrid-sized jolt during the next ten years could kill nearly 300 people, injure 27,000 others and cause damage totaling $3.2 billion. The survey also found little concern for building earthquake-resistant structures in the region and noted that only Memphis had any quake-preparedness plans. Explains Jimmy Cravens, the mayor of New Madrid (pop. 3,029): "All of us who grew up around here have felt earthquakes...