Word: ton
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...become a magnet for military installations. To the east of the city is Peterson Air Force Base; to the north is the U.S. Air Force Academy; to the south is the Army's Fort Carson; and buried deep in Cheyenne Mountain to the southwest, shielded behind 25-ton doors, is the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Notes retired General James E. Hill, president of the local Chamber of Commerce and former commander of NORAD: "It's not like all of a sudden we're a new glamour girl." Military activity currently provides 30,000 of the city...
...seven-man Challenger crew also saw an abundance of less spectacular stuff during the first half of their planned seven-day mission: a literal flood of foul-smelling particles of food and feces spewing from the pens of 24 rats and two squirrel monkeys in the $1 billion, 15-ton, European- built Spacelab stowed in Challenger's cargo bay. So pervasive was the odiferous tide that it was carried through a connecting tunnel into the shuttle's cockpit. "This isn't very much fun, guys," complained Commander Robert Overmyer to Mission Control...
...married the beautiful and exceedingly wealthy Edwina Ashley. It was a stormy union, marked by his many affairs and her infatuations, including one with Jawaharlal Nehru, but it lasted until Edwina's death in 1960. Stationed in Malta in the late '20s, the couple kept a 66-ton yacht in the harbor. Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and an assortment of royals were their houseguests...
...them unable to forage for food. Great heft could even trigger infertility. In 1946 a paleontologist concluded that because large animals do not shed excess heat as efficiently as small animals do, a temperature increase of just 2 degrees F could have baked the considerable testicles of a ten-ton male dinosaur enough to kill his sperm...
...last earthly journey in dignified splendor. Granddaughter of King Rama IV, the Thai monarch romanticized in The King and I, she was the wife of Thailand's last absolute ruler, before a coup installed a constitutional monarchy in 1932. The Queen's remains were borne on the traditional 40-ton, gilded teakwood chariot to an ornate cremation pavilion. Though some were critical of the estimated $1.2 million expense, funerals are occasions of the deepest importance to Thais. Explained Thaveesak Senanarong, who organized the spectacle: "Even one's enemies come. It is their last chance to apologize...