Word: tanked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite recent structural mishaps with McDonnell Douglas' problem-plagued DC- 10 jumbo jet, the aircraft manufacturer plans to add an additional fuel tank beneath the rear engine of an updated version of the plane called the MD- 11. Some startled pilots at Delta Air Lines -- which is buying the new plane -- are outraged that the designers would place 2,000 gal. of combustible fuel right under the same engine that disintegrated last month on a United Airlines DC-10. If the controversial fuel bladder had been on the ill-fated United plane when the engine disintegrated, the pilots...
...that gave an award to the artist Andres Serrano. One of Serrano's pieces was a photo of a plastic crucifix immersed in the artist's urine -- a fairly conventional piece of postsurrealist blasphemy, which, though likely to have less effect on established religion than a horsefly on a tank, was bound to irk some people. Mapplethorpe's show was to contain some icy, polished and (to most straights and, one surmises, at least a few Republican gays) deeply repulsive photos of S and M queens doing this and that to one another...
Constant and mysterious military movements stirred confusion and alarm. Tank convoys rumbled to the east, away from Tiananmen, only to return a few hours later. Armored vehicles were deployed at a strategic cloverleaf east of the square, as if awaiting attack by another military force. Rumors of skirmishes, even artillery duels between the "bad" 27th Army and the "good soldiers" of the 38th Army, fluttered through the capital. With fear of an armed confrontation rampant, foreign governments ordered the evacuation of their nationals. Beijing airport was packed with diplomats, tourists and businessmen waiting for tickets and specially chartered planes...
...brief encounter between the man and the tank captured an epochal event in the lives of 1.1 billion Chinese: the state clanking with menace, swiveling right and left with uncertainty, is halted in its tracks because the people got in its way, and because it got in theirs...
...bloody assault by Deng's armed troops ended all that, and also the Goddess of Democracy, which was crushed by a tank once the troops gained control of the square. Even so, the events of the past seven weeks immunized vast numbers of people against the traditional propaganda bromides and convinced them that the government was not invulnerable: it was only an agency of brutal power. If the student campaign failed, it at least succeeded in forging a historic new link between China's intellectual community and its masses. As an observer said earlier in the week, "It will...