Word: waning
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...recent issue of Britain's weekly Aeroplane, the Red Air Force's Major General Kondratov said that in six months of 1942 the Russians destroyed 600 Junkers 528 in the air and on the ground. Wrote General Kondratov: "Along the Soviet front . . . we saw German self-confidence wane and then vanish when transport airplanes ceased to arrive...
Busiest group is the American Association of Variable Star Observers, who report their findings to the Harvard Observatory. Variable stars are distant suns which flare up, wane, flare up again with a mysteriously pulsating energy. Says one amateur observer: "Once you've watched a variable star in action, you're never the same again. It's like having your finger on the pulse of the universe." Variable stars (which include the Pole Star) pulsate, and nobody knows why or how, except that their behavior probably involves enormous transformations of matter into energy...
...Spain's King Philip II didn't like him, and Toledo's ordinary citizens thought his weird, restive, distorted canvases the work of a madman. Critics suggested that he was astigmatic, if not insane. When he died in 1614 his fame was already on the wane, and soon his greatest paintings were tucked away in dim sacristies and behind altars. The flashy, flattering portraits of brilliant Court-painter Velásquez became the rage, and El Greco was forgotten. Forgotten he remained for nearly 300 years...
...scientific methods Bacon applied to nature. Hitherto history had been written in terms of the lives of great men, as a chronicle of unusual events, as a show directed by God. Vico believed that societies are shaped by their origins and environment, that like men they grow and wane...
...decline, fell under Spanish rule for 60 years until a revolution in 1640 restored her independence. Napoleon drove her ruler to Brazil in 1807 and in 1822 that country declared its independence. Her possessions plucked away by oncoming nations, she saw her great empire shrink and her prestige wane. Her last king, an indoor sport who gave up all for Actress Gaby Deslys, was deposed in 1910 and after a short revolution a republic was proclaimed. Between 1910 and 1926, 40 Governments and 18 revolutions followed in rapid succession. Then the Army took control, placed General (now President) Carmona...