Word: pencils
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Eden and other prominent Britons. Nobody was hurt-largely because of the British Government's long experience with unfriendly mail. But the packet was ingenious. Within an inner envelope, marked "Private and Confidential," were 1) a cardboard folder containing enough powdered gelignite to kill the opener, 2) a pencil-sized battery, and 3) a detonating system supposed to work when the envelope was slit with a metal letter opener or when the expectant reader opened the folder. The gadget lacked, of course, any enclosed note of apology...
...tired syntax in 10,000 editorials. Nabokov's style glimmers with reflections of many great styles (Gogol's, Flaubert's, Joyce's) and yet is distinctly his own: rapid, brilliantly metaphorical, daintily savage and smooth. The reader, never bored, can run his own blue pencil through Nabokov's excesses, such as the "anal ruby" of a bicycle. He will not have to use the pencil often...
...Manhattan, a group of comic-strip addicts formed the American Society for the Advancement of the Piebald Eyeball, solemnly pledged themselves always to pencil dots in the center of Little Orphan Annie's eyes before turning to the sports page...
Guiding Star. Last year some new evidence turned up. Dr. H. W. Babcock of Mt. Wilson Observatory, Calif, performed the unlikely feat of measuring (by spectrum analysis) the magnetic field of the star called 78 Virginis. When Professor Blackett heard about it, he grabbed pencil & paper. The star's size, mass and speed of revolution could be estimated fairly accurately. Nothing more was needed. The magnetic field of remote 78 Virginis just about proved what theorizing had already predicted: it was closely proportionate to the magnetic fields of the earth...
...Pope sometimes enjoys saying: "Now I can settle down to my day's work." Usually he studies again whatever matters the Cardinals have submitted to him in the morning's Udienze di Tabella, then prepares any speeches he may have to make. He jots down pencil notes which he later expands on the typewriter. When he is forced to use ink (he dislikes fountain pens), he uses a very fine...