Word: sextant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...about the North Pole. First, Santa Claus lives there. Second, Admiral Robert E. Peary was the first person to get there, on April 6, 1909. Evidently these two lessons could be equally elaborate fictions. Geographers have concluded that Peary probably missed the Pole. Now Peary's handwritten notes of sextant readings, compass bearings and the sun's altitudes have surfaced. They indicate that the explorer himself knew he was no closer than 105 nautical miles away, according to Baltimore astronomer-historian Dennis Rawlins. The jottings, found in an envelope dated April 5 and 6, 1909, by Peary's wife, note...
...crossing to Rio -- "fantastic," Janis recalls, offering further a sort of book-jacket blurb that would surely kill sales: "Nothing hairy about it!" Michel and his sextant navigated a course straight as the kerf from a sawmill blade. One day he told his family they would be in Rio at 1 the next morning. At midnight, they could see land. With scant instruction -- he had had a couple of lessons in 1976 -- Michel was now a credible yachtsman, and a diesel mechanic and carpenter to boot, what with all the breakdowns that never cease on a boat -- any boat...
...racers were equipped with a sophisticated electronics system known as Argos that prints out satellite weather information and provides the boat's precise location in latitude and longitude, relieving the mariner's ancient fear that he is lost. "They don't even need a sextant," harrumphed one old waterfront sage...
...scheduled through the 1980s. The first of the Pentagon payloads was carried aboard Columbia on its most recent mission. Though officials refused to talk about the contents, the packages included a cosmic-ray detector, ultraviolet and infra-red sensors for gauging the tracks of enemy missiles, and a space sextant that will enable satellites, or even the shuttle, to navigate without guidance from earth. During the last flight, the only references to the top-secret devices came in the form of cryptic commands to the astronauts from the Air Force Satellite Control Facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. ("Switch...