Word: parkes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...games will go on." those emphatic words were spoken by Francois Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, after a homemade pipe bomb exploded in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park at 1:21 Saturday morning. His spirited announcement at 5:20 a.m. was an echo of the last time that violence devastated, but did not halt, the Olympic Games, when 11 members of the Israeli team were killed by Palestinians in Munich in 1972. But this determination not to let a terrorist act obliterate the Olympic spirit was also a stance against an unwanted future--against an awful time...
...international rivalry and unity at the first fully attended Games in history--had been transformed into something considerably more muted. Alice S. Hawthorne, 44, of Albany, Georgia, was killed by the bomb; Melih Uzunyol, a 37-year-old Turkish cameraman, died of a heart attack while rushing to the park to cover the story; and 111 people were wounded, most by shrapnel that flew as far as 100 yards from the blast. Everyone else was simply stunned. "The Olympics have been going so well," said Sultan Muhammad, an Atlantan who came to watch the Games. "It's such a shame...
Until the ground shook and the peace was shattered, Olympic Park had been the site of a weeklong open-air party. Covering 21 acres, it was the spiritual heart of the festival, a melting pot where many thousands of visitors daily could wander without paying for tickets, or passing through metal detectors. It was the place where the kids could frolic in a misty fountain. It was also the commercial heart of the games, home to the Swatch pavilion, the Coca-Cola Olympic City, Budweiser's Bud World, and an enormous AT&T sound stage. And as the competition drew...
...people flooded out of the park toward Peachtree Street, a stream of ambulances sped in to carry the wounded to local hospitals. The evacuation was swift and efficient. But even at four in the morning the streets were still populated; authorities had thrown up a non-negotiable security barricade around the park, stranding many people who could not get back to their hotels. Resigned to living through a strange night, many just curled up to sleep on the sidewalks as helicopters whirred overhead. Khaki-clad soldiers marched in formation into the Main Press Center, while men in FBI jackets poked...
...makeshift waiting center set up in the auditorium of Grady Memorial Hospital, a mile from the park, shaken relatives and friends of victims gathered in search of information about their loved ones. From time to time, a Red Cross nurse would appear and read out names written in blue ballpoint pen on her rubber gloves. Much of her news was reasonably good: most patients had only minor injuries. Meanwhile, those waiting traded stories about the night. "It didn't seem like a real bomb to me," said John, a young British man who was crying as he waited for news...