Word: senting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Congress last week: ¶ The Senate and House passed and sent to the White House a military money bill of $39.2 billion, which fell short of Administration requests by only $19.9 million but notably revised some of the Defense Department's strategic planning. Specifically, Congress added $85 million to start boosting the U.S.'s intercontinental ballistic missile squadron strength from nine to 17, also $87 million to speed development of the second-generation, solid-fueled ICBM Minuteman. The Administration had wanted $260 million for a steam-powered aircraft carrier, but Congress said no, instead put up $35 million...
...life in the hands of the ingenious engineers who had sweated for years to anticipate his problem. He pulled two overhead handles to trigger a fast sequence: 1) a canvas windscreen came down over his face, 2) the plane's canopy blew off, 3) an explosive charge sent seat and pilot into the thin, -65° air, and 4) in the air a cable from the plane yanked the metal seat off his rump, left Marine Rankin above 40,000 feet with his jet helmet, oxygen mask and his parachute, preset to open automatically-at the safe-breathing level...
...fire engines had been headed for a minor flare-up in some trash barrels a few feet from where Rutherford "had parked his death-laden truck. Assistant Fire Chief Roy McFarlane thought he had things under control, sent one fireman to the hospital with burned hands. City Patrolman Don DeSues, 32, took over traffic direction at the nearest corner. Suddenly, George Rutherford's truck went off with a blast bigger than a World War II blockbuster, dug a 50-ft.-wide crater 20 ft. deep, pulverized six blocks of business buildings, transients' apartments and homes, smashed the windows...
...backed up police and firemen, sealed off the 23-block danger area, hauled the 52 injury cases to hospitals, kept out looters. Damage estimates ran to $12 million, but the count on the dead was harder to come by. The coroner's deputies accounted for twelve bodies, then sent off for lab tests samples of lighter ashes that might be eight or more transients in transient apartments. Five blocks from the crater lay a bent axle, the biggest piece left of the truck that Driver Rutherford parked in a sleeping town...
...fact, something about the sight of automated soldiering seemed to provoke an irrepressible urge in passers-by to make the sentries convict themselves of being still human. Girls took to throwing their arms around the guards while chums snapped pictures to be sent home. Some sentries suffered the indignity of having toffee apples stuck on their bayonets; others found as they started off on their 25 paces that their shoelaces had been tied together. This summer has been especially galling: tourists have poked, tickled, thrown banana peels or ice-cream cups underfoot, sung out derisive marching orders, brazenly grabbed...