Word: trait
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Gettysburg), Jackson served as an artillery officer under Winfield Scott on the epic march from Vera Cruz to the heights of Chapultepec. It was wily General Scott who taught him the military secret on which all his future success was based: scout, flank and pursue. He early showed another trait-a stubborn insistence on perfection-that was invaluable on the battlefield and infuriating off it. His career in the U.S. Army came to a clouded end because of a rancorous quarrel over a finicky point of military etiquette. As professor at Virginia Military Institute, where he taught optics and astronomy...
...find out whether other species than the giant clam like to collect it, they added a little cobalt to San Francisco Bay water (which normally has no detectable trace) and put some local clams into it. Later analysis by the Navy team showed that these clams also have the trait of collecting cobalt...
...excellent production of Macbeth is marred slightly by a very understandable trait: invention. Since next to Hamlet, Macbeth contains the largest number of familiar episodes and speeches, any company that approaches it is challenged constantly, and most feel the need to perform each moment better than ever before. Or, at least, differently. Although the Old Vic creation is always interesting, it is occasionally a bit obvious, and calls unwanted attention to details by superfluous inventiveness...
These unsolicited letters, whether they come from a schoolgirl such as Lisa Fitzgerald or a Nobel prizewinner such as William Faulkner, have one quality in common: a nononsense, no-holds-barred sense of deep and outspoken conviction. Late in the year many of our letter writers share another trait: they are reviewing the events of the year and choosing their candidates for TIME'S Man of the Year. One of these this year was Finbarr M. Slattery, who is known as "the divil to argue" in his native village, Asdee (pop. 250) in County Kerry, where the Shannon meets...
...Blood Is Red. Once Author Furnas deserts history far genetics, he goes off on some fairly esoteric, and often vague, tangents ("Families showing six-toedness as a recessive trait are a good rule-proving exception"). In a tone of things-I-never-knew-till-now, he announces several latter-day commonplaces, such as 1) under equal environmental advantages, Negroes stack up well with whites in IQ tests, 2) Negroes have no unique odor of their own, 3) Africa is a racial crazy quilt, and the modern American Negro is no more closely related to his African ancestors than a modern...