Word: madrid
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...sleepy cotton fields around New Madrid, Mo. (pop. 3,400), convey no sense of seismic menace. Yet scientists say the area is potentially one of the most dangerous earthquake zones in the world. Early in the past century an unseen fault, obscured by tons of sediment, unleashed a fearsome trio of tremors -- each as powerful, some say, as the earthquake that virtually destroyed San Francisco in 1906. The eyewitness accounts read like the tall tales of Baron Munchhausen. The ground rippled with waves as though it were an ocean. The Mississippi River raged with waterfalls and rapids. Fountains of sand...
Today the fault at New Madrid remains active, regularly generating small, unnoticeable earthquakes and, from time to time, palpable jolts. Such quakes usually do not stir more than passing interest. But last week residents of southeastern Missouri snapped to attention when a moderate earthquake, rated 4.6 on the Richter scale, rattled windows, spilled coffee and broke ceramic figurines. Reason: the earthquake followed a much publicized prediction that the fault is likely to produce a major shock come Dec. 3, and many people feared last week's tremor could be a precursor. The prediction, which has made its way into several...
...well be made of playing cards. "The infrastructure in this part of the country has never been tested by a major quake," says Arch Johnston of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at Memphis State University. Fortunately, when the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 occurred, the New Madrid region was too sparsely populated to suffer significant damage or injuries. A modern-day replay, however, would make the quake that shook San Francisco last year seem tame. That tremor measured 7.1 on the Richter scale. In contrast, the big quakes that rumbled forth from New Madrid may have exceeded...
...made his first visit to the U.S. in 1952 as an exchange student in Bronson, Mich., and later graduated from the University of Michigan. Prager joined TIME in 1965 as a correspondent in the Hong Kong bureau and has worked in Vietnam, New York City, San Francisco, Beirut and Madrid. He oversaw the Germany issue and, in a story based on conversations with eleven former classmates, looked at how Germans of his generation have fared. "They have no heroes," he says, "but they are proud that their country has become a mature democracy so firmly embedded in an integrated Europe...
Aesthetes may complain that Barcelona lacks the glittering royal art galleries and grandiose vistas of London, Madrid or Paris and that its geography, a natural amphitheater framed by mountains and sea, produces a smog worthy of Los Angeles. Some may even view as excessive chauvinism the natives' insistence on speaking Catalan rather than Spanish. But those who take the time will discover in this most Mediterranean of cities a rare personality, fanatically avant-garde yet obsessively preservationist. First century Roman baths are being excavated amid the twisting streets of its dense Gothic quarter. The famous Picasso Museum is housed...