Word: soften
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Geology and the northern weather provided rough obstacles. Along the Beauharnois Canal, contractors grated into sandstone so hard that it wore out drill bits in eight hours, had to soften the stone by firing it with kerosene torches at 4,000° F. They burned, drilled and blasted through two miles of solid rock. Partly to stabilize employment in Canada, contractors there kept up work at full speed through the winter months; they battled towering icefloes that threatened cofferdams, poured concrete in subzero weather, using jets of steam to keep it from freezing while it cured...
...House passed, 345 to 12, and sent to the Senate the long-awaited Administration bill to soften the McMahon Act's atomic secrecy provisions. Under the bill the Administration would have discretion to tell any NATO ally the latest facts of the size and destructiveness of nuclear weapons, could also pass along, subject to congressional veto, nonnuclear components of atomic weapons for arming by the U.S. in the event of war. Any ally that had made "substantial progress" in its own atomic weapons program (i.e., Britain), subject to the same veto, could receive actual weapons designs, nuclear materials...
...issue, the British retreated farther than the Germans. They promised to maintain about 50,000 troops on the Rhine till 1961, and instead of the $132 million in support that they wanted for this year alone, they accepted some $100 million spread over three years' time. To soften the impact in Britain, Germany agreed to deposit $140 million in London for purchase of arms and services...
...nudge up through 1958 at least. In Kansas City cattle brokers last week were ordering calves for fall delivery and fattening for as much as 33? per lb. v. 25? last fall. Cattlemen eventually will have bigger and beefier herds to sell, and prices will then start to soften. But the price-pushing demand for beef will probably continue to outpace supply for a long while. The Agriculture Department figures that beef production will not rise much until the 19605. Reason: it takes about three years before the gleam in the bull's eye is turned into steak...
...exposed to a blast of high-temperature gas, a thin layer of the plastic on the surface burns off, leaving a mat of silica fibers arranged so that they cannot be easily blown away. At 3,000° F. (about the melting point of iron), they begin to soften, but melted silica is sticky, viscous stuff that clings tight until it turns to vapor. The vaporizing process draws heat from the remaining Astrolite and tends to keep it cool...