Word: sirs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...three 1981 physics winners were cited for contributions to spectroscopy, a basic tool for studying atoms and molecules that dates back to the moment when Sir Isaac Newton passed a beam of sunlight through a prism and found that it was split into a rainbow of colors, a spectrum. Newton's successors discovered that any material heated to incandescence not only produces a spectrum but one so distinctive that it could be used like a fingerprint for identifying the substance. Astronomers soon found that the spectra of distant stars yielded all manner of information, including the star...
Each year at this time, Sir Geoffrey Gabb, George III professor of history at Cornwallis University, lectures his freshman students on a little-known but decisive episode in American history. Last week marked the 200th anniversary of that event. To commemorate the occasion TIME went to Cornwallis to record Sir Geoffrey's idiosyncratic and provocative comments...
...flying kites in thunderstorms. Thomas Jefferson, the greatest propagandist of the age, also sought refuge in Europe, where he lived with his beautiful black mistress and continued his mischief-making for another 43 years. A fascinating, tragic figure, Jefferson became an inspiration to generations of novelists, poets and composers. Sir Walter Scott used him as the hero of Monticello, and after one apparently jolly dinner at Jefferson's Italian villa, Shelley was moved to write...
...where the French and the British waged constant warfare along their river boundary. In fact, the final battle of the Mississippi War took place as late as 1865. Only then, at the Battle of Prairie du Chien, did the combined British and American armies, under the leadership of General Sir Ulysses S. Grant, persuade the French and their Indian allies to stay on their side of the water. After that, Paris seemed to lose interest in its third of the North American continent, and with French blessing, the newly independent nation of Louisiana unfurled its flag on July 14, Bastille...
...proudest boast of Britain's Sir Freddie Laker is that he made transatlantic air travel affordable to the masses. For instance, his walk-on Laker Skytrain service from New York City to London costs only $250 one way, less than half of what most other airlines have been charging for even their economy-class tickets. But suddenly, Sir Freddie finds that he is facing stiff competition from one of the very airlines that his cutthroat pricing policies had siphoned business from in the first place: Pan American World Airways. Under its new chairman, C. Edward Acker, the loss-plagued...