Word: tails
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Default. By every available piece of evidence, the voters had already made up their minds to answer: yes, it's time for a change. That was why Earl Warren could afford to campaign like a big, friendly Saint Bernard, tail-wagging his way east across the nation. The Republicans had only to raise no ruckus, make no thumping blunders, keep their fingers crossed against a world upheaval-and their election seemed assured...
Next Moment, Whoom! To watch* a jet engine spring into life is to feel that power. Dimly visible inside is the turbine, like a small windmill with close-set vanes. When the starting motor whines, the turbine spins. A tainted breeze blows through the exhaust vent in the tail, followed by a thin grey fog of atomized kerosene. Deep in the engine a single sparkplug buzzes. A spot of fire dances in a circle behind the turbine. Next moment, with a hollow whoom, a great yellow flame leaps out. It cuts back to a faint blue cone, a cone that...
...heat 1,000 five-room houses in zero weather (though much of the engine's exterior is cool). From the air intake in its snout, invisible hooks reach out; their suction will clasp a man who comes too close and break his body. The blast roaring out the tail will knock a man down at 150 ft. The reaction of the speeding jet of gas pushes against the test stand with a two-ton thrust. If the engine were pointing upward and left unshackled, it would take off like a rocket, each pound of its weight overbalanced by more...
...planes are pushed by the reaction of the blast of hot gas shooting out the tail pipe. The present problem is that this blast is speeding much too fast-at about 1,300 m.p.h. Even when the plane is flying at 600 m.p.h., the blast is shooting backward in still air at 700 (1,300 minus 600) m.p.h. The engine is still wasting too much energy merely stirring up the air. To approach the normal propulsive efficiency of a propeller plane, a jet plane would have to fly faster than sound. But one arresting compensation-for the jets-is that...
...considered an affront to national honor when the inspector claimed to have found evidence of rats. He refused to have his ship fumigated, insisting that his was a clean ship, with no rats. The health men showed him rat footprints on greasy ladders. No use. They showed him tail prints in the ventilators. No use. When the Pobeda threatened to sail on, the health inspector yelled to a Coast Guard cutter: "Shoot to sink if she moves fore...