Word: vastness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Crossroads. A vast (100,000-square-mile) basin watered by two great rivers, the Danube and the Tisza, and completely ringed around by mountains, the Magyars' new home was a richly fertile and well protected fortress, but no sheltered hideaway for the shy or the meek. Located at the crossroads of the historical highways along which the crusaders of Christendom would press toward the East and raiding Asian conquerors would drive south and west in endlessly repeated waves, the Danube basin had already been overrun and evacuated by dozens of conquerors before Arpad arrived. To ensure their own survival...
...toward the sea, squeezing through valleys, crawling over hills, plunging down the sides of mountains in great frozen cataracts. What it does not bury or crush, it encircles. And finally, at the continent's rim, it meets the frozen seas, and ice battles ice on a titanic scale. Vast crevasses shudder open along the tortured ridges; ice rafts as large as the state of Connecticut are torn loose from the continental shelf and set floating like derelict monsters in the frigid waters...
...question was just as puzzling to his contemporaries. Donatien-Alphonse-François, Comte de Sade, was born in a Paris palace in 1740. His father was military ruler of four French provinces and lord of vast estates. His mother was of royal Bourbon blood. He was a youthful companion of the young Prince Louis-Joseph, fought as a cavalry officer in the Seven Years' War. At 23, he docilely married the daughter of a rich, petty aristocrat in a ceremony attended by King Louis XV and his Queen. Five months later he was arrested in a local bordello...
Vague as it was, Soekarno's proposal sounded suspiciously like something he might have picked up during his recent visits to Russia and China, where he was bothered by the lack of freedom but impressed by the way that vast work projects were organized. Such notions did not suit Soekarno's old friend and Indonesia's longtime Vice President Mohammed Hatta, whose remedy is to replace Indonesia's multiparty parliamentary government with something more like the U.S. system. Four weeks ago, fed up with Soekarno's refusal to listen to his ideas, respected Mohammed Hatta...
...burgeoning U.S. economy of the future, products that now seem adequate will become rapidly obsolete. Once a road was considered acceptable as long as it went somewhere. Now the nation's vast highway network is rapidly becoming as obsolete as the model T. The $33.5 billion, 13-year Government highway program will start bringing it up to date in 1957. And states everywhere are adding billions more for new turnpikes, secondary roads, and enormous elevated crossovers such as Pittsburgh's five-level parkway interchange designed to eliminate traffic and bottlenecks and speed travel. In California, for example...