Word: oldest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bentsen is the oldest vice-presidential nominee since Harry Truman picked Senator Alben Barkley, then 71, in 1948. He lives the life of a comfortable millionaire in Washington's exclusive Kalorama section. He did not give up his Mercedes even when he was shepherding sensitive trade legislation through - Congress (although he now drives a Lincoln). His wife of 45 years, Beryl Ann, better known as B.A., is a former model for Vogue and Mademoiselle who gave up her career to marry Bentsen in 1943. Of the rolling-bandage school of Senate wives, B.A. last year served as first vice chairman...
...Biennale, which began in 1895, is the oldest living, official new-art event. Through the '50s, it acquired an inimitable prestige, and its prizes were held to be enormously important in the marketing of an artist: nothing could have given Robert Rauschenberg's career a faster boost than winning the Gran Premio in 1964. This changed in the wake of '68, when art-student radicals occupied the Accademia di Belli Arti, in protest against the commodification of culture (how many of them, one wonders, are art dealers today?). In panic, the Biennale decided in 1972 to jettison the prize system...
...which produced 140,000 bbl. of crude a day, along with natural gas, had been in operation since 1976 and was one of the oldest of the 123 fixed platforms in the British exploration area of the North Sea. Some experts cited equipment failure or metal fatigue as possible causes of the disaster. One widely held view was that there had been a leak in the natural-gas compression apparatus and that ignition had occurred through some kind of mechanical failure...
...months, Abdul-Jabbar at 41 is the league's oldest player, and has already re-enlisted. After he made two free throws at the end of Game 6, the 7-ft. 2-in. center was asked about those familiar butterflies that infest stomachs. His, he explained, had long since expired of old age. When he first arrived at UCLA as Lew Alcindor, Abdul-Jabbar was a sculpture of pipe cleaners, all connected at right angles, that later became high-tension wires. Now he is the most serene mobile in sports...
...observation attributed to Winston Churchill about the second oldest profession is increasingly true of too many Congressmen: we have established what they are; now we are just haggling over price. The jumping-off point is $1,000, the maximum an influence peddler can give to any one candidate. But that is barely enough to be put on hold by a congressional aide. Says a weary lobbyist: "Imagine a maitre d' at a pretentious restaurant who thinks you stiffed him with a $20 bill. That's how a Congressman treats a lobbyist who can't do better than the legal limit...