Word: shroud
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NASA has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure the RTGs are safe. Each of the 144 plutonium pellets in the generators, designed by General Electric, is surrounded by an iridium shell. Coated pellets are then encased by two graphite shells and finally by an aluminum shroud. The U.S. Department of Energy has spent $50 million testing the generators. In one experiment, engineers fired shrapnel traveling 700 ft. per sec. at the iridium casings. None was pierced. In another test, scientists tacked an RTG to a solid rocket booster and blew it up. No damaged graphite shells were detected...
...open wooden coffin containing Khomeini's remains to the city's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, nearly a million mourners thrust forward in the blistering heat and choking dust, many wailing and pounding their heads as they groped to touch the body and snatch a piece of the linen burial shroud...
Some managed to surge past a force of Revolutionary Guards, clambering into the casket to plant kisses on the Imam's face. The corpse spilled to the ground, bare feet protruding from beneath the white shroud. As the Guards beat back the crowds, firing shots in the air and spraying fire hoses, other soldiers shoved the body and coffin back into the chopper. It lifted off with the casket hanging precariously out the door...
...past the outstretched hands to deliver the coffin to the grave site. At the last instant, the metal lid of the casket was ripped off, and the body was rolled into the grave, in keeping with an Islamic tradition that requires that the dead be interred in only a shroud. The grave was quickly covered with concrete slabs and a large freight container to prevent delirious mourners from exhuming the corpse. By the end of the ceremony, more than 440 people had been hospitalized and an additional 10,800 had been treated for injuries...
...first gray-brown stains appeared in the azure skies above Los Angeles before the outset of World War I. During World War II, the summer haze was beginning to sting the eyes and shroud the mountains that ring the city. By the mid-'50s, Los Angeles' smog, as the noxious vapor had been dubbed, was sufficiently thick and persistent to wilt crops, obstruct breathing and bring angry housewives into the streets waving placards and wearing gas masks. Oil companies were urged to cut sulfur emissions. Cars were required to use unleaded gas, and exhausts were fitted with catalytic converters...