Word: matchwood
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...another warning of what navies in the atomic age would have to face in insidious, invisible death if their ships escaped the bomb's first blast. The other chief lesson of Test Baker was that even so stout a hull as the Saratoga's was like matchwood if a bomb burst within half a mile. Transports and destroyers with much thinner skins, but twice as far away from the bomb, suffered hardly...
...rolling, novelty entrance to Mrs. Corneily's masquerade in Soho Square, London. He raised his bow and rolled forward. He found that he could not steer. Neither could he stop. He screamed. Two seconds later, Mrs. Corneily's ?500 mirror was in splinters, the fiddle was matchwood, and Merlin was bleeding like a pig. Thus, in 1760, the sport of roller skating was born...
...were in America. ''I used to listen to your radio broadcasts," he said, "but now it is too damn dangerous. In my house I could listen to the radio fairly safely, but then came the big raid of July 27. Nothing was left of my house but matchwood, so my wife and I had to move into a one-room flat where it is dangerous to listen to the radio...
...more and better planes. An Army spokesman said-falsely-that Attu was reduced mainly by air action. Another spokesman confessed that an entire Japanese convoy was sunk in the Bismarck Sea last March by Allied bombers. Earlier, a Home Ministry official had told the people that Japan's matchwood houses are "ideal for defense," for "there is no danger of being buried under bricks during air raids...
...tore loose from his train and hurtled onto the culvert. The engine carried across the bridge even as it crumpled, safely reached solid tracks beyond. But the second locomotive and the whole train behind piled up in the ditch. Eleven of the wooden cars telescoped or were splintered to matchwood. There was no fire, but when rescuers from Chatsworth reached the spot they found 81 dead, 372 injured -Illinois' worst railroad wreck...