Word: toweritis
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...Louis-Sébastian Lenormand climbed to the top of an observatory tower in Montpellier, France, leaned over the edge, and jumped. An astonished crowd watched as he fell to the ground with the aid of a new contraption called the parachute and landed unhurt...
...landed with a thud on Liberty Island's stone coping, a few yards from the water. A Russian man named Vladimir Ossovski performed a similar stunt a year later when he jumped from a bridge in Rouen, France into the river Seine. In 1975, a member of the CN Tower's construction crew parachuted off the building - at 1,815 feet (553 m), the world's tallest free-standing structure - and was promptly fired. That same year, a man from Queens parachuted off the top of the World Trade Center and was arrested by security guards once he landed...
...subtle touches. In the book Lily daydreams of meeting her mother Deborah in heaven; and after 10,000 years telling Lily she was not to blame for her death, Deborah would spend the next 10,000 fixing the girl's ratty hair. ("She would brush it into such a tower of beauty, people all over heaven would drop their harps just to admire it.") The movie doesn't make a big declamatory deal of this, but after a few days with the Boatwrights, Lily looks magically presentable, pretty - because for once she's been cared...
River of Gold To see how finance has reshaped the British capital, take a trip to Greenwich, about 3 1⁄2 miles (6 km) downstream from Tower Bridge and home to the Royal Observatory, which dates back to 1675. It's the birthplace of Greenwich Mean Time, but for years the area was as well known for its mean streets: 19 Greenwich neighborhoods rank among the most deprived in England. Since 2001, the local council has pursued a major state-funded regeneration program aimed at cutting crime and unemployment, and improving the decaying public housing stock. But these days...
...Mike Anselmo, regional manager of PNC Financial, a dominant bank in the area. Anselmo's firm is a case in point. Unlike so many larger banks that got tangled in the subprime scam, PNC Financial avoided exposure to derivatives or combustible mortgages. Now PNC is building the first office tower to go up in downtown Pittsburgh in 20 years. There's also a new hockey arena being built, as well as a casino and even some downtown condos, which will keep the construction trades busy while they get crushed elsewhere...