Word: strand
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Peru's coast is even more paradoxical than its mountains: it is a desert that blooms, an air-conditioned strand in the tropics. Only 10 to 100 miles wide, the coastland stretches for 1,400 miles. Rain is virtually unknown there, but 52 well-fed rivers poke down the plunging mountains. Dammed and channeled, this water turns the valleys green with sugar cane, ripens grapes for Peru's famed pisco brandy, grows the fine, long-staple cotton that is king of the country's exports. The Humboldt Current cools the whole coast, and as a crowning convenience...
...near Madison, for his circular runway, but the city council said no. Last fortnight he set up his apparatus on the ice of Lake Kegonsa, a safe distance from Madison. The spindle and hub were attached to a steel barrel frozen into the ice and guyed solidly. A double strand of woven nylon, 400 ft. long, led to a quick-release fixture under a wing of the airplane...
...scattered throughout the great building. One day last week. Manners climbed the stone stairs of the tall main tower to tend the intricate mechanism of gears, chains and weights in the great central clock that juts out from the law courts at Temple Bar, above London's busy Strand...
Manners' twice-weekly chore with the big clock was a simple matter of starting the motor that winds its huge weights into place. As he worked away inside the tower, hurrying Londoners in the crowded Strand below glanced up as usual for a reassuring look at the great white dial that guided their daily scurrying. Auto horns blared their impatience at a moment's delay, exhaust pipes splattered with selfimportance, old friends called out greetings, and tardy law clerks beat sharp tattoos on the pavements with hurrying heels. In the cacophony that makes a great city...
Factor's toupees ("hairpieces" in the trade) were an even bigger success. Instead of the obvious, helmet-like objects that hairless U.S. men expected, Factor made a new, almost invisible toupee by sewing each strand of hair to a piece of fine flesh-colored lace, sold every style from romantic waves to college-boy crew cuts. Now men all over the U.S. wear Factor "toups" (price: up to $150 apiece), and the company sells 20,000 a year. In Hollywood, nine out of every ten male stars over the age of 35 wear "hair additions" on the screen...