Word: transit
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...stuck my heel in the ground. This would be the upper left corner of the first grave. I found an empty K-ration carton and split it into wooden stakes. I paced off the graves in rows of 20 and marked them with the stakes. I had no transit, tape measure, shovels, picks or any other equipment needed to establish a properly laid-out cemetery...
...great German astronomer Johannes Kepler first predicted a transit of Venus, but he died before he could witness the 1631 event. In 1769, the explorer Captain James Cook-just a lieutenant at the time-made his first voyage to the South Pacific in order to view that year's transit from Tahiti. And more than 50 expeditions were launched from the U.S., Britain, Russia and other nations to every corner of the earth to see the 1874 transit...
There was an important reason to make such efforts: by recording the moments a transit began and ended from different vantage points on Earth, astronomers could use trigonometry to precisely calculate the distance from Earth to the sun. That was easier in theory than in practice, though, and nowadays astronomers use other methods to measure the distance to the sun. The world will be watching next month, but mostly out of curiosity and wonder at seeing a planet move across the face of the sun-firsthand proof that the seemingly two dimensional sky is anything but. Another transit is coming...
...tracks, and railroads grew hostile toward trespassers. Now comes terrorism. Railroads upped security after 9/11, but since the March bombing of four trains in Madrid, commuters have been more worried. "Anyone seen taking photographs is going to be questioned," laments Richard Maloney, spokesman for SEPTA, Philadelphia's public-transit authority. "The wide-open spaces and the freedom we have enjoyed to meander almost anywhere is gone." Urban train buffs report being surrounded by police cars and customs agents. A Haverford College student of South Asian descent was detained last year by SEPTA police after he photographed a station--homework...
YOUR FATHER'S FELLOW TRANSIT COP HAD NEVER TALKED ABOUT HIS WAR EXPERIENCE WITH YOU OR YOUR FATHER...