Word: tinder
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...night, 484 dead were counted; it was the most disastrous U.S. fire since 571 people were killed in Chicago's Iroquois Theater holocaust in 1903. One Boston newspaper ran a two-word banner line: BUSBOY BLAMED. But the busboy had not put up the Cocoanut Grove's tinder-box decorations, nor was he responsible for the fact that Boston's laws do not require nightclubs to have fireproof fixtures, sprinkler systems or exit markers...
When Stalin set the European tinder-box ablaze by signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler in August 1939, the civilized world gasped: How could he? One simple answer might have been that the pact was a characteristic move in the hard-boiled game of Russian foreign policy. But ever since Russia became Germany's Finland, the other United Nations have desired a more detailed explanation of Stalin's pre-invasion policies. John Scott's book is an attempt to supply this explanation...
...their million homes are built of wood and paper. The city's three main highways are only 40 feet wide; its four inadequate railway terminals are choked even by holiday traffic. Water reserves are inadequate, fire-fighting equipment is antiquated. In the Philippines the U.S. also had a tinder-box capital (see p. 77), but the U.S. had enough bombers to make a death trap of Tokyo...
During the past few years skling has been increasing in popularity all over the country, but probably the initial spark was dropped into the New England tinder. Harvard took to recreational skling and racing several winters ago with Brad Washburn '33 and Alec Bright '19 as founding fathers. Ever since the sport has been spreading here, culminating last year with the building of the large, well-equipped cabin in Jackson, New Hampshire, and in the official recognition of skling as a minor sport...
Perhaps Benito Mussolini was sincere in his guarantees to the small States. But sincerity sometimes relaxes. Adolf Hitler was thought to have been sincere when he swore the Sudetenland was his last territorial desire in Europe. The nations of the world last week were stuffed with tinder. By entering the war as Germany's first ally, Benito Mussolini struck a fateful match. Whatever the immediate result of II Duce's participation, the long-range danger was that no man knew how far the fires of war would spread...