Word: stadia
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...Syene (Aswan) in southern Egypt to whose bottom the sun's rays penetrate only during the summer solstice (June 20-22). This meant that the sun was directly over Syene at that time. He also had a figure for the distance between Syene and Alexandria: 5,000 stadia. Only one observation was necessary. During a summer solstice, he measured the shadow cast by a vertical pillar in Alexandria. It turned out to be one-fiftieth of a full circle (about...
...Eratosthenes had all the information he needed. The shadow cast by the vertical pillar at Alexandria would have the same relation to a full circle that the distance from Alexandria to Syene (where sunlight was vertical) would have to the circumference of the earth. The answer: 250,000 stadia (21,913 nautical miles), which is remarkably accurate. The latest measurement of the earth's circumference around the poles: 21,580 nautical miles...
Weepings and wailings and gnashings of teeth recently rent the air as coaches and other athletic officals lamented this country's poor performance in the Winter Olympics. The consensus around the stadia and other such national focal points seems to be that a mediocre bobsled team indicates a mediocre country. Thus, by failing to turn out as large a number of winners as the Russians, the United States automatically lost its position as a world leader...
...tourists' England. Forty miles wide by 60 miles long, it is bisected by the river Ribble into a northern rural section that merges into Wordsworth's Lake District, and a southern industrial coalfield choked with so many cities, slums, mining villages and cotton mills, greyhound stadia, slagheaps, canals and railroad sidings that it forms a single complex, something like the Ruhr. South Lanes, as Britons call it, is the most populous region of Britain outside London. Its people are a nubbly mixture of English yeomen, Welsh shepherds and Irish peasants, congealed into Lancastrians by the Industrial Revolution. With...
...cruise ship nosed its way through the Isles of Greece, stopping daily to give the tourists a chance to see the sights by bus or on muleback, royal teen-agers hacked around like any other kids, squirting each other with pop, staging impromptu Olympic games in ancient stadia and rewarding winners with stolen kisses. In the evening there were movies, and sometimes all hands joined to practice the mambo and the rumba, with Frederika easily carrying away top dancing honors. While the youngsters gulped gallons of Coca-Cola, their elders forsook champagne in favor of solider Scotch...