Word: plante
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Trofim Lysenko is an egregiously indestructible plant breeder from the Ukrainian black-earth belt who long ago won world notoriety, scientific contempt and Stalinist favor with his attempt to rewrite nature to suit Marx. A weird cross between sinister charlatan and seedy fanatic. Lysenko used his political influence, based on Stalin's favor, to wreak ruthless vengeance on his critics, the scholars who had made genetics-until his rise-the pride of Russian science...
Symbol on a Hill. Castro has confidence, physical courage, shrewdness, generosity and luck-qualities that will one day plant his statue in some Havana plaza. He won his long war not by fighting but by perching in sublime self-confidence on the highest mountain range in Cuba for more than two years, proving that Batista could be flouted. He became the symbol of his rebellious country, pulled quarreling rebel factions together and inspired them to face down a modern army...
About the time disulfiram (Antabuse) was hailed by Danish doctors as a wonder drug for alcoholism, plant physicians began hearing complaints that workers recently exposed to dust in the manufacture of calcium cyanamide*could not take a drink-it made them sick. Disulfiram proved a disappointment: it was too dangerous for widespread use, required a doctor's close supervision. But last week a medicinal variant of cyanamide was released in Canada for prescription sale, on the strength of researchers' reports that it is almost as potent as disulfiram and far safer...
Tiny Ted Atkinson was 20 years old and making little progress as a $35-a-week shipping clerk in a Brooklyn chemical plant when a truck driver friend suggested that his build (5 ft. 2 in., 100 Ibs.) was ideal for a jockey. Ted got a job with the Whitneys' Greentree Stable as a stableboy, watered horses and broke yearlings while he learned about racing. On May 18, 1938, at Beulah Park in Ohio, he rode his first winner, Musical Jack. Said Ted afterward: "Musical Jack did all his own winning. I was just along for the ride...
...gasoline as a source of power. Scientists were more restrained. SNAP III is an impressive achievement, they point out, but it is an application of an old principle. It merely converts the energy coming from polonium to its lowest form, heat-the standard process in any atomic power plant-and the production of electricity from heat (by means of thermocouples) is a familiar process. The conversion of nuclear radiation directly into electricity -an exciting possibility that is being vigorously explored in many laboratories -is yet to come...