Word: medals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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According to one sardonic French saying, half the riders in the Paris Metro wear the Legion of Honor while the other half have applied for the medal. More than most people, the French love to get awards, and last week, at annual awards ceremonies, medal mania was in full swing. The country's most prestigious decoration, the Legion of Honor, was given to 1,500 men and women, including venerable (77) Film Director Rene Clair and Feminist Writer Louise Weiss, as well as a pop singer, a swimming champion, a truck driver and a physical-education teacher in Brazzaville...
...addition, a bewildering array of other government awards was distributed last year. Medals of Meritorious Work were handed out to 200,000 people who have been employed for 25 years at no more than two different private companies. Those who stayed home to stem the decline of France's birth rate were not forgotten. Mothers of five legitimate children received the Bronze ATCH Medal of the French Family. Criteria for winning this award were somewhat less severe for mothers who received gold medals for producing ten children for France, with no questions asked about the fathers...
...wife, who was allowed to leave Russia earlier for an eye operation, accepted the prize in his stead. Standing on a flower-bedecked podium, Yelena Bonner Sakharov smilingly received the gold Nobel medal and the $143,000 check that goes with it. Then she read the five-minute acceptance speech that her husband had managed to send out of the Soviet Union. Characteristically, Russia's most outspoken champion of civil liberties took the occasion to plead for a worldwide amnesty for political prisoners. He also expressed his "deep personal longing" for "genuine disarmament." After the ceremony, Yelena Sakharov watched...
...occasion was the 75th anniversary of the first Nobel awards ceremony. The Nobel committee invited all past winners of the heavy gold medal to Stockholm. Of the 80 who made it to the ceremonies, 32 were from the U.S. Among those present: Albert Szent-Györgyi, 82 (Medicine, 1937) and Glenn Seaborg, 63 (Chemistry, 1951). The uniquely distinguished group was put through a tight schedule of formal receptions, sightseeing and museum visits. Mostly, though, the scholars wanted to exchange scientific gossip and give lectures on their specialties. "It's beautiful-terrific!" said the U.S.'s Gerald...
...book also contains some tense, dramatic episodes, for instance, how Ali came to throw his gold medal into the Ohio River. He had been refused a hamburger in a whites only restaurant, shortly after his triumphant homecoming to Louisville, and then was attacked by a band of Naziinsignia-bearing motorcycle hoods who demanded that Ali give them the medal. Ali fought them off, but the whole experience finally sealed his disillusionment with white America...