Word: war
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Human interest in tiny machines dates back to the clockwork toys of the 16th century. But it was not until this century that making things smaller became a matter of military and economic survival. Spurred by the cold war and the space race, U.S. scientists in the late 1950s began a drive to shrink the electronics necessary to guide missiles, creating lightweight devices for easy launch into space. It was the Japanese, though, who saw the value of applying miniature technology to the consumer market. In his book Made in Japan, Akio Morita tells how he proudly showed Sony...
Later, in the Oval Office, he sighed that the Wall would stay until the Soviets tired of it. "We could have sent tanks over and knocked the Wall down," he mused. "What then? They build another one back a hundred yards? We knock that down, then we go to war...
When Kennedy did see the Wall, the event became one of the great spectacles of the cold war, his speech one of the most memorable in his presidency. When Kennedy flew into Berlin that June morning, he had a text that did not please him. "You think this is any good?" he asked the U.S. Berlin commander, Major General James Polk, who had joined the Kennedy caravan.Polk scanned the speech and replied bluntly, "I think it is terrible." Kennedy agreed and began to write a new one. But before he taunted the builders of the Wall, he rode four hours...
COVER: After nearly three decades as the cold war's premier symbol, the Wall crumbles...
...significance of the Wall extended far beyond the city, far beyond Germany. It became an epitome of the partitioning of Europe, the overarching symbol of the cold war and one of the places where the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact came gunsight to gunsight. After the magnificent oratory of John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, it was de rigueur for U.S. Presidents -- and other Western leaders -- to come and shake their fists at the Wall and call down imprecations against those who had conceived and built it. But the barrier also stood as a reminder...