Word: ordeal
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...Karachi, so frenzied were the final moments of the hijacking ordeal that survivors disagreed over whether the firing and the explosion of hand grenades had lasted as briefly as 30 seconds or as long as five minutes. Many of the luckiest passengers, who skidded unhurt down the escape chutes, were so terrified that they ran for several hundred yards without stopping until they reached the nearest of the airport's three terminals...
Exactly what happened during the last terrible moments of the ordeal is not clear, but survivors agree that the climax came after the plane's internal generator, which powered the lights and air conditioning aboard the 747, failed, probably because the lubricating oil had run low. At that point, Pakistani authorities sent their trained commandos into action...
EVERY YEAR around this time, I have to live through an ordeal. I am sitting at the lunch table, listening to the usual idle chatter about Proust's toenails and the meaning of life, when it suddenly starts...
Before Mrs. Aitken's death--and before the 1985 retrial of von Bulow that ended in his acquittal--she disinherited Miss von Bulow because her granddaughter stood by her father during his four-year ordeal...
...their supersonic choppers for an unusual New Year's Eve party. Placing fun people in trouble spots is a fertile idea, as writers from James Barrie to James Dickey have discovered. Those insulated by class, money and education play at high adventure only to find themselves tested by ordeal. Theroux devises both real and symbolic trials. The aliens pose little physical risk. Disorganized and primitively armed, they are no match for the Owners' incinerating particle beam or a perimeter-protection network that suggests an oversize bug zapper...