Word: rapier
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...that a man who has murdered his way to the throne and is hanging onto it for dear life never once appears with a crown on his head. At the end, however, his indulges in a fresh bit of business: instead of being stabbed with Hamlet's poisoned rapier, he tries to seize the weapon and fatally cuts himself in the tussle. Once again, I wish Gwynne and Dotrice had swapped assignments...
British radar failed to spot the low-flying Argentines. The Rapier surface-to-air missiles that British ground forces had used with great success at the Port San Carlos beachhead were already ashore at Fitzroy, but they had not yet been set up on hillsides overlooking the estuary. Although both ships would have been unloaded in another hour or so, at the time of the attack the Sir Galahad was still packed with most of its full complement of 68 crewmen and, according to some accounts, as many as 500 troops waiting to go ashore. Those on board...
...below, there was disciplined pandemonium. Klaxons howled as British seamen rushed to red alert stations. Machine guns hammered a deafening staccato and Sea Dart and Seawolf missiles aboard British destroyers and frigates locked on to targets and then whooshed away in clouds of smoke and flame. Land-based Rapier antiaircraft missiles joined the fray, as did the nimble Harriers with their Sidewinder missiles (see box). The attacking Argentine pilots could see the missiles zooming toward them and hear the gunfire, but they continued to press their attacks. Said one military attache: "They are bloody good flyers with plenty of courage...
...kelp; helicopters panic the ducks; mines are planted far out near the gorse and heather. This is what war does to a landscape. The place that was a few weeks ago a vast serenity with marvelously fresh air is now "a major bridgehead," home to Scorpion light tanks and Rapier surface-to-air missiles and all the other accouterments of the most advanced mayhem...
...Liszt's daughter. Sent to England during World War II, Von Bülow studied law at Cambridge. His reputation as a bright barrister attracted Oil Billionaire J. Paul Getty, who made him a chief aide. Getty called him "an extra right arm" and said he had "a rapier-quick mind and a penchant for hard work." Von Bülow is said to be a man of great wit and charm, but his cosmopolitan suaveness and reputed right-wing views have not appealed to all. Says one acquaintance: "He isn't a monocle popper, not a Junker...