Word: polars
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Noble-browed Polar Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 59, published a book about Iceland (Iceland: The First American Republic), joined Local 537 of the New York College Teachers Union, because "as yet there is no union for polar explorers...
...translated "canals." Rivers cut channels, but canals are built by intelligent agents. In the U. S., Astronomer Percival Lowell picked up the canal idea with enthusiasm, claimed he could see them clearly. His theory: the canals were built to bring water from the melting ice of the polar caps, by Martian inhabitants desperately trying to keep their arid lands irrigated. Other astronomers, some with better eyesight than Lowell's, declared that the canals were optical and psychological illusions. Certainly narrow, clear, straight markings which could be called canals do not show up in photographs, appear at their clearest...
Promptly after his election last March Pope Pius XII tossed a lifeline to a sinking friend, once-honored General Umberto Nobile. Mussolini had busted Airman Nobile out of the service when his 1928 Polar expedition ended with the crack-up of the dirigible Italia which killed eight crew members, ended Italy's lighter-than-aircraft dreams. In his small flat near the Tiber, where few friends dared visit him, Umberto Nobile silently endured the usual fate of Fascism's failures-ostracism. Only honor left was his membership in the Pontifical Academy of Science, conferred by the late Pius...
...gift of nature of which expansive Southern California does not boast is floods. After a 227-day drought ending with December temperatures above 90°, a polar air mass collided with a wave of damp tropical air, condensed it in seven days of cloudburst. The precipitation, 7.26 in., made the wettest early December since 1889, reminded frightened Los Angelenos of their disastrous floods last March (11 in. in five days). Casualty: a ten-year-old boy fell and was knocked unconscious, drowned in a puddle. Wisecrack: Radio Comedian Bob Hope complained that he had been arrested for going through...
Later in the summer Washburn's expedition discovered what is believed to be the world's largest ice field outside the polar regions. In extensive flights around Mount Logan and Mount Saint Elias, Washburn proved the existence of a tremendous glacial system 255 miles long...