Word: semi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...were few .50-calibre anti-aircraft guns. The shortage was made up by lettering ".50-calibre" on a pie plate, pasting it on the side of a Springfield rifle. Except for the regular outfits, no regiments had more than a token equipment of the Army's new Garand semi-automatic rifle. Except for the regulars, no outfit was completely motor-equipped. Hundreds of trucks and sedans were rented by the day from civilians to fill out the National Guard's complement of rolling stock...
Before a House subcommittee last month, Major General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the U. S. Marine Corps, unbagged a cat, which set up a muted yowl. The cat: news that the crack-shooting Marine Corps was less than satisfied with the Garand semi-automatic rifle, Army-sponsored successor to the reliable, bolt-action 1903 Springfield. With a firm grip on the cat's collar, General Holcomb said discreetly: "We are not certain yet that the Garand rifle will meet our needs. We will know in the course of the next two months whether it is a better rifle than...
...which the authoritative National Rifle Association panned the Garand as an inaccurate shooting piece, given to overheating, hard to maintain. But his mild remarks disclosed that the Marine Corps was doing some rifle shopping on its own account, had already given a preliminary look at a new semi-automatic put out by Winchester Repeating Arms Co. (which is now making Garands under Government contract). This week the new Winchester was ready for tests, to be conducted for the Marine Corps by the Army Ordnance Bureau...
...agricultural districts irrigation projects have transformed semi-deserts into fertile land. The reddish soil of some of the regions of central Asia is almost fantastically fertile. Since the days of Tamerlane peoples have fought wars for water, have dug aryks (irrigation canals). In periods of peace when the primitive irrigation systems functioned well, the country bathed in prosperity. In wars the aryks were destroyed and the desert advanced again. Soviet irrigation systems for cotton land were completed under the first and second Five-Year Plans, but only in 1939 and 1940 did crop yields become impressive...
...teach at M. I. T. Latest scholarly arrivals in the U. S are University of Aberdeen's Lancelot Hog ben (Mathematics for the Million, Science for the Citizen) and his equally eminent wife, Dr. Enid Charles, Britain's No. 1 population expert. A semi-refugee, Lancelot Hogben was caught on a lecture tour in Norway by the German invasion, escaped through Russia to the U. S., last week appeared ready to stay if he could...