Word: pasts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...manufacturers have not yet come back to the mass transit market, although there has been a recent surge in passenger demand. During the past two years, while gas prices steadily increased, the nationwide number of travelers using mass transit has risen an average 4.4% a month over the preceding year, to an estimated 27,775,000 a day. In May, as California began taking the brunt of the first gasoline shortfalls, ridership across the U S Climbed 7.3%. Mass transit experts prediet that the June figures will show an increase "in the double digits," perhaps adding...
...nation's two other relatively new subway-and-elevated train systems are having mixed results. Ridership has purted 15% in the past year on San Francisco-Oakland's seven-year-old BART system (for Bay Area Rapid Transit), but it las been able to handle the crowds efficiently. Washington's newer Metro has coped as best it could but still has too few cars to accommodate the mobs. Even before they leave the first station, trains often have standing room only. Metro also is ridden with bugs: brake defects have forced cars to be withdrawn from service...
...past five weeks, Mexico's Bay of Campeche has presented a harrowing sight to an oil-thirsty world. A relentless flow of uncontrolled crude has been boiling to the surface, then bursting into an inferno. It is casting off a polluting slick that has broken into many splotches and is spreading. John Robinson, the Government oceanographer who heads the U.S. team studying the spill, says that it now reaches over an area 300 miles long and 25 miles wide. Some U.S. marine biologists fear that the spill, pushed by currents, could soon begin to hurt plant and fish life...
...glamorous Merck & Co. and IBM, which is the market's most popular growth stock. Their inclusion reflects the rising importance of technology and drug companies in the economy and stands to make the Dow somewhat more volatile. Both companies' shares have risen substantially in value over the past two decades (Merck has more than tripled, IBM has quintupled), and relatively high-priced stocks usually have sharper swing than do lower-priced ones. Had IBM and Merck replaced Chrysler and Esmark in the Dow at this time last year, the average would have been more than 14 points higher...
...happier developments on NBC's Saturday Night Live this past season was the unleashing of Bill Murray. A latecomer to the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Murray had broken into the show by serving as unofficial second banana to the stars, John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner. When he finally seized centerstage, he stopped being a straight man and became a live -or maybe frazzled-wire. Murray is a master of comic insincerity. He speaks in italics and tries to raise the put-on into an art form. His routine resembles Steve Martin's, with...