Word: midlands
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...postwar Britain, the "terrible twins," waxing plump and still bachelors, were made air vice-marshals.* David took his jet fighter squadron to Suez to guard the Empire's lifeline; Dick took charge of the air defense of Britain's Midland counties. Last week Air Vice-Marshal David, now 48, climbed in his Meteor jet and took off for Cyprus, about 300 miles away. Somewhere in the airforce-blue waters of the peaceful Mediterranean, he crashed and drowned, leaving Air Vice-Marshal Dick to go it alone...
...placid little (pop. 6,949) Midland, Ont. on the shores of Lake Huron, 24 newly arrived German workmen last week began uncrating $100,000 worth of optical machinery in a rented curling rink. The workers, from Leitz's famed optical works at Wetzlar, began setting up lens-grinders, buffers, drills, in preparation for moving into a new $200,000 factory near by. There they will assemble Leica cameras, photo accessories, special lenses, and aim for a share of rearmament's precision optical orders...
...confiscated (the Alien Property Custodian will sell it this week to the highest bidder at an auction from which Leitz is barred). To choose the site, 81-year-old Dr. Ernst Leitz, son of the founder, sent over his 46-year-old son and namesake who thought that Midland, with its lake and nearby rivers, looked enough like Wetzlar to keep the emigre workmen from getting too homesick...
Even in oil-rich West Texas, the area around Midland (pop. 34,256) had once given up hopes for oil. The land had been drilled repeatedly without luck. In 1943, Seaboard Oil found a promising rock formation, but no oil, on Abner Spraberry's farm. Not until 1948 did Wildcatter Arthur ("Tex") Harvey discover that the "Spraberry Trend," as the formation was named, was full of oil, though imprisoned in the fine-grained, hard-packed sands. Then, the new techniques of the industry came into play: soap & kerosene, pumped into the sandstone under tremendous pressure, loosened it enough...
Railroader Robert R. Young, who likes to inveigh against the "goddam bankers," this week became one himself. Through three of his corporations, Young bought a controlling interest in the Marine Midland Corp., whose 14 banks and 113 branches, spread all over New York State, serve more than 500,000 depositors. He has been buying up stock for the past 18 months and last week owned 508,100 shares of common worth about $5,600,000, or 9½% of the bank's total common stock, and 11,220 shares of preferred (current price: about $56). Young says he intends...