Word: mayday
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...scheduled to announce the winners in the first phase of the design competition to build the airframe and engines for a U.S. supersonic airliner. Last week May Day came and went-and no announcement from Halaby. The U.S. aviation industry suddenly has good reason to remember the meaning of mayday in international code: Help...
...shortly after Captain Zarbis gave the order to abandon ship, the last mayday message was flashed: "S O S from Lakonia. Last time. I cannot stay any more in the wireless cabin. We are leaving the ship. Please help immediately...
...feet a minute, and you glide 1½ miles a minute. That gives you about ten minutes during which you can find a spot to land within a 900-square-mile area." Sundin burned into the students' brains the radio frequency of 121.5 megacycles, the universal "Mayday" channel. "Now," he pointed out, "if something goes wrong, you just turn to that frequency and say 'It's Mabel-Help!' and they'll help. Why, they'll clean every other airplane out of the area for you, Mabel, and they'll talk you right into...
...Mayday." Dr. Lilly is now convinced that dolphins have an extremely complicated language. They converse in a great variety of buzzes, whistles, rattles and grunts. Since most of the sounds are at higher frequencies than the human ear can hear clearly, Dr. Lilly plays tapes of dolphin talk at quarter speed. So far he has learned only one phrase of dolphin language: the "mayday" distress call, a sharp, up-and-down squeal that sounds like a wolf whistle...
Once he put a partially paralyzed dolphin in a pool. As it sank helplessly toward the bottom, it gave its "mayday" call, and the other dolphins rushed to its rescue. They boosted it up to the surface so it could breathe. When it sank again, one of them swam under it, scraping its tender undersurface and triggering a reflex action of its tail that shot it up to the air. The operation was accompanied by a blizzard of dolphin talk...