Word: radar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...greatest immediate danger was the war of attrition around Mount Hermon. For the seventh consecutive week, Israeli and Syrian gunners shelled one another, and Israel claimed that its jets destroyed Syrian tanks and a radar station along the mountain. Israeli President Ephraim Katzir, on an Independence Day visit to his soldiers, narrowly escaped a Syrian artillery barrage that was aimed at Israel's positions...
Right now Stevie has everything going for him. Sitting up there onstage, his head bobbing and weaving sightlessly as though trying to tune in on some private radar of the mind, he recalls no one so much as his old idol to whom he used to listen on Detroit's WCHB, the blind rhythm-and-blues great, Ray Charles...
...would seem to stand still at times, then move backward briefly, in the Mercurian sky. Another oddity: Mercury's trip around the sun takes 88 earth days; yet it rotates on its axis only once every 176 earth days-a fact first discovered in 1965 by earth-based radar. Thus Mercury's "day" is twice as long as its year...
Like the moon, Mercury apparently has no appreciable atmosphere or magnetic field. Its surface, bombarded by intense solar radiation, may be quite dusty. Recently, radar astronomers suggested that Mercury has mountains as high as 4,000 ft., rolling hills and valleys, and some lunar-like craters, some of them perhaps of volcanic origin. Surface temperatures are far more extreme than those on either the moon or Mars. At the height of the Mercurian day, they may reach 940° F., more than enough to melt lead. At night they plunge to - 350° F. No living things could be expected...
Still, the real show may be behind the scenes. Any performance of Les Troyens is a miracle of calibration. In the pit, Conductor Rafael Kubelik uses everything but radar to maintain contact with seven assistant conductors. They are backstage with walkie-talkies to communicate with each other as they herd bands and choruses around the platforms, often walking in the opposite direction from the motion of the turntable. When film sequences start to roll, Kubelik's tempos must not vary by more than four seconds from performance to performance...