Word: nadir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There was great reason for optimism when China opened its doors to the West. The policy change was a dramatic reversal of China's former dealings with the outside world, which reached their their nadir two decades ago during the Cultural Revolution. Sinophiles, and there are many, would now have the chance to tour China, and the Chinese appeared to want visitors...
Underarmed, undernourished and under fire, the contras are on the ropes. Most are languishing in makeshift bases in Honduras rather than staging raids in their native Nicaragua. After a few highly publicized victories, the contras have reached the nadir of their troubled five-year history. Indeed, one of the obstacles facing Ronald Reagan's policy of using the contras to make the Sandinistas "cry uncle" is that, even with a significant infusion of military aid, the desultory band of rebels shows little potential of posing a threat to the regime in Managua...
Ever since it gained independence from Britain in 1962, Uganda has been racked by bouts of tribal war, political ineptitude and state-approved brutality that badly eroded the once lustrous prospects of a country that Explorer Henry Stanley called "the pearl of Africa." Uganda probably reached its nadir under the infamous Idi Amin Dada, who seized power in 1971 from the country's first leader, Apollo Milton Obote. During Amin's eight-year reign of terror, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people were killed, and thousands more were forced into exile. After the dictator expelled the country...
Several recent films, most notably The Outsiders, have played on this adolescence violence theme in an apparent attempt to link youthful energy, usually directed against others, with some kind of statement about what it means to be young in America. But Tuff Turf reaches a new nadir of gratuitous violence masquerading as moral message. What makes this especially curious is the true lack (in the first part of the movie, at least) of overt sex. The film really does try to convey a feeling of "nice guys finish first" while attempting to retain a real-world grounding...
...generally acknowledged to have been the L.I.R.R.'s nadir, a period of such egregious discomfort that at least a small part of the growth of the Sunbelt can be traced to the conditions on the commuter line. The railroad was 150 last year, and there are definite signs of improvement. Last year 88.5% of the trains arrived within five minutes of the schedule--up 6% since 1979. It may be better than it was in the '70s, but it is not yet as good as it was in 1902, when Teddy Roosevelt's summer White House lay in Oyster...