Word: pickings
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...elaborate Air Force tracking system, set up across the North Pacific especially for the Discoverer series, heard nothing for 1 hr. 30 min. Then a Hawaiian station heard a brief, faint signal. After five more hours of silence, Air Force stations in Alaska and the U.S. began to pick up sporadic signals. Last week, nearly five days after launch, the Department of Defense felt able to announce that Discoverer I was in polar orbit. But it had not been spotted visually, perhaps because its orbit carried it over the world's inhabited areas in bright daylight or darkness, when...
...average person was scarcely aware that any kind of storm had struck the earth. A Minnesota family probably was unaware that the same phenomenon that produced the spectacular northern lights the evening of the tenth also permitted them to pick up BBC telecasts from London. A ham radio operator in Rhode Island with a normal range of fifty miles was startled to pick up a station from Texas, but a Trans World Airlines pilot had to fly thousands of miles over the North Pole without radio contact anywhere. As soon as the Sun set on the evening of the tenth...
Piaf sings all this with the authority of a little girl who used to sing for her supper on the streets of Montmartre, but was too proud to pick up the pennies. A friend did that for her. Nor did her later success ever take her far from trouble. A 1949 airplane crash killed World Middleweight Champion Marcel Cerdan, who is still remembered as her great love. A marriage to French Singer Jacques Peals ended in divorce. Says she: "I am a very faithful woman, very serious about marriage. I have a lover who came with me to America...
...human species seems headed for space, where the practical pickings are few and exceedingly hard to pick. Much more profitable, many scientists believe, would be a vigorous attack on the earth's own oceans. They cover more than two-thirds of the planet's surface, contain the bulk of its life. But most of their dark bottoms and middle depths are not so well known as the visible surface of the moon...
Millions of Americans pick up the telephone to get the weather or the correct time, shopping news, stock market quotations, recorded prayers, bird watchers' bulletins, and even (in Boston) advice to those contemplating suicide. Teen-agers could hardly live without the telephone -and many parents can hardly live with it. Twisted into every position-so long as it is uncomfortable-teen-agers keep the busy signals going with deathless conversation: "What ya doin? Yeah. I saw him today. Yeah. I think he likes me. Wait'll I change ears. Whaat? Hold on till I get a glass...