Word: stageful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...still many a moon from conquering space or even moving beyond the crawling stage of unmanned satellites. But even the week's snarls and snaps were comforting sounds because, like the clear call of the Explorer in its ceaseless cruise, they signaled that the nation was at least gearing up for the conquest...
...Sept. 20, 1956, the first Jupiter-C was ready for firing at Cape Canaveral. It was a four-stage missile, with even a dummy fourth-stage satellite configuration-just like the bird that last fortnight put Explorer into orbit. By this time, Pentagon brass had a notion that Von Braun might be trying to beat the Navy into space with an unauthorized-and presumably undignified-major satellite. The Army, which had had the foresight to bring Von Braun and his team to the U.S. in the first place, and which had supported him all along in the face of awesome...
General Medaris therefore had no choice but to call Von Braun. "Wernher," said he, "I must put you under direct orders personally to inspect that fourth stage to make sure it is not live." Without a satellite, Jupiter-C flew 3,300 miles-farther than any U.S. missile before or since. Wernher von Braun knew then that he could surely launch a satellite-if given the chance...
This noble exit from history's stage was written by Shakespeare for Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, one of the great Englishmen of his time. This biography, the first appropriate to the scope and splendor of Wolsey's career, makes excellent reading on three counts: it evokes the vast historic tide that submerged the Middle Ages in the frothy waters of the Renaissance; it tells a whodunit about who would rule England's roost; and it is a success story of a butcher's son who rose to highest honors in his country and his church only...
With gusto, he accumulated bishoprics (and illegitimate children). His taste for high life and ceremony was not merely personal; pomp and circumstance were a matter of public relations, an art in which Wolsey was a master. A high point of his career came when he stage-managed the futile but beautiful pageant known to history as the Field of Cloth of Gold: in a pleasant French valley, England's King Harry and France's young King Francis I met to pledge a treaty of friendship. It was, says Author Ferguson, "the last great canvas of the Middle Ages...