Word: secret
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...outstanding performance enough to surpass any Olympic hopeful, the Day of Judgment arrives. The near-divine tribunal convenes, its members undisclosed, to deliberate upon your fate. (Here's where we imagine the doors of the Court of Star Chamber slamming shut.) Later, without any revelation of who these secret judges are, the announcement is made that you have been deemed unworthy. You are relocated to Kansas. Meanwhile, perhaps, another up-and-coming Man in Black has already been chosen for promotion in your place--someone just like you, except he's from Kansas. And now, if you're lucky...
...begin with the tale of the fin, its rise and fall from the American car and the American Dream. The design staff at General Motors copied the first fins off a top-secret U.S. Air Force plane (the Lockheed P-38), quietly grafting them as little bumps on the rear of the 1948 Cadillac. The next year's model was a best seller, and as the 1950s progressed, the fins proliferated. They appeared on Oldsmobiles, on Buicks, on Chryslers, with Fords finally sprouting them in 1957. The fins, fickle as Paris hemlines, grew wide and high, rising...
...plane slowly disgorged 105 passengers, 11 crew members and four British Beetles. Oops, Beatles. On their first U.S. tour, the mop-topped, top pop wailers, John Lennon, 23, George Harrison, 21, Paul McCartney, 21, and Ringo Starr, 23, grinned amiably at the whole mad display. What was their secret? "A good press agent," chirped Ringo. (They have...
Despite this historic isolation from China, when Chiang Kai-shek first sent troops to Taiwan after World War II, the Taiwanese initially welcomed them, thinking that the Chinese would rule more fairly than the Japanese. 2-28 shattered these hopes. Soon after the massacre, martial law and an extensive secret police were instated for the next 40 years. Ironically, 2-28 had the important effect of cementing the Taiwanese identity--the people of Taiwan wanted little to do with their Chinese oppressors, and, for the first time, the Taiwanese strongly felt that they were indeed a distinct society and culture...
...Only 15 years ago, Taiwan's human rights record was just as onerous as, if not worse than China's. Martial law ended in 1987 only under the intense pressure of a growing opposition movement. For the first forty years, the opposition had to stay underground because of the secret police's extreme vigilance. Thousands of dissidents were imprisoned or executed for voicing their belief in liberty and democracy, and for their criticism of the Nationalist government. Yet, in the ten years since the repeal of martial law, Taiwan has become a full-fledged democracy, with its first legislative elections...