Word: smog
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...will be interesting to see how the world's athletes are able to compete in the Los Angeles smog...
Naturally, not everyone is celebrating. Some of the world's playground directors feel ill at ease with this free-enterprise organization, finding it anomalous and annoying. However, except for a common dread of freeway traffic, and an occasional fearful word about smog, most have reacted with at least a cautious grace. Kosti Rafinpera, secretary-general of the Finnish Olympic Committee, says, "This is the first time the Games have been organized by a company, not a city. We're trusting that the Olympic spirit and the spirit of amateurism will be preserved." And many who have inspected the individual venues...
Even California's fabled weather-no one had yet heard of smog-refused to cooperate. Olympic committees from northern countries complained that their athletes could not compete in the heat of what they assumed was a desert climate. Nonsense, replied the boosters, Southern California is moderation itself. And to prove it, they set out thermometers during the first part of August 1931, on the dates on which the competition would be held a year later. To their consternation, a heat wave sent the mercury climbing past 100°F day after day. The results were quietly consigned...
More recently, the Parthenon has suffered from an eye-stinging yellow smog that envelops Athens for most of the year. Called the nefos (literally, cloud), it is composed mainly of sulfur dioxide, a waste product given off when petroleum is burned in autos, factories and residential furnaces. As rain and dew mix with the SO2, they form a weak sulfuric acid that turns marble into crumbling plaster...
...which had begun to spill into the sea. For most of the day, the tanker burned, sending thick coils of black smoke rolling hundreds of feet into the air and bathing the area in an eerie orangish glow. Strong westerly winds blew a 75-mile-long cloud of choking smog toward shore, depositing thick black goo on houses and cars and coating newly shorn sheep with an oily film. Up to 25 miles inland, farmers reported an "oily rain" falling on their crops...