Word: raft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...campaign and analyses of results, it seemed that the only news was election news. But normalcy-or what passes for it-quickly returns. The delegates to the Paris peace talks met for the 91st time and reported no progress. Four men completed a hazardous voyage on a raft from Ecuador to Australia to prove that American Indians could have sailed across the Pacific. American B-52 bombers once again flew missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to stem a North Vietnamese buildup in the Demilitarized Zone. Ralph Nader was locked in another safety battle with General Motors. The WAVES...
Over the years, other attempts come to grief more quickly. His pal's belt buckle catches noisily on the edge of a zinc roof at the key moment. An American sleeping potion administered to a guard fails to work in time. Months are spent in building a raft, piece by piece and then storing it in a grave, only to have a fellow prisoner squeal. But Papillon still has money, left from more than 10,000 underworld francs that he put in a plan, a small, polished, waterproof metal tube, harbored in his lower intestine. Papillon is also stirred...
Meanwhile, thinly disguised as an ex-con named Henri Charrière, who manages to resemble both the late Robert Benchley and not-so-early George Raft, Papillon the man has turned up in Paris to promote Papillon the book. He is photographed with Brigitte Bardot. For Paris Match, he revisits French Guiana and poses in the crumbling cells of the now abandoned penal colony. "Would you like to come back to France for good?" a reporter asks him. "France is my blood," says Papillon, with that terse flair that never seems to desert him. "Venezuela is my heaven...
Precisely what happened to the AN-22, which carried about 25 crewmen and passengers, may never be known. U.S. rescue craft took the lead in searching the icy waters near the plane's last recorded radio signal. They located a life raft and some debris but later concluded that neither came from the missing plane. The Soviets, obviously distressed at the loss of an expensive piece of strategic equipment, rushed eight Tu-95 reconnaissance bombers into the area to join the search. The AN-22, which made its debut in experimental form in 1965, was developed to haul heavy...
After sailing for 57 days in a 40-ft. reed raft resembling a basket, Thor Heyerdahl and his seven-man international crew reached the Caribbean island of Barbados, 3,200 miles across the Atlantic from their point of departure on the Moroccan coast. Happy to have demonstrated with Ra II (Ra I was abandoned last year 600 miles from Barbados) that the ancient Egyptians, who sailed such papyrus craft, could have discovered America 40 centuries ago, Heyerdahl proudly noted that his vessel had survived its journey intact. Ra II will eventually be installed in an Oslo museum alongside an earlier...