Word: weather
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...four-year cycle of drought, which began in 1950, was hardly noticed at first; the borders of the drought area varied from year to year because of local weather conditions. In parts of Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and Illinois, for instance, rainfall has been far below normal, yet still far above that of the Southwest. But in the five most affected states (see map), the earth has grown drier every year. Parts of Texas, between the Red River and the weakly trickling Rio Grande, has gotten less than 10% of normal rainfall for four years; southwestern Oklahoma has gotten little more...
...Communists ask for a three-hour truce so both sides may pick up their wounded. The doctors work desperately with their amputation knives while chaplains intone prayers for the dead. At 1200, the truce ends. Some 1,000 French reinforcements from Hanoi parachute into Dienbienphu. But the weather is bad, and French battle planes cannot get at the brutally accurate Red artillery...
...nearer." At 2030, Red artillery knocks out the radio and searches for the remaining Algerian mortars. The Algerian infantrymen shift their mortars around the perimeter and keep the Reds at bay. "Our barbed wire has disappeared under heaps of their dead," an officer reports. At 2300, the Communists withdraw. Weather still blocks out French tactical...
Phase Two. At last, the weather clears. French tactical air flies 1,000 sorties in six days against the bleeding Communist army. General Giap pulls back into the jungle to re-form and count the cost. It is very high: about 3,500 killed, between 4,000 and 9,000-wounded. They have cracked the northern rim, but have not broken the main defenses of Dienbienphu. They have knocked out Dienbienphu's two airstrips, but supplies pour in and wounded move out in a motley armada of helicopters and transports that parachute their cargoes. For the French, the cost...
...eccentric comes to stay in a small British town. He is one of the harmless kind who imagines he is Napoleon Bonaparte, carries a rabbit in his old-fashioned beaver, decks out in a Dickensian weskit and cravat, and parades the streets in perfect weather under an open umbrella, followed by mobs of delighted children. Everybody calls him Napoleon, and is happy to have him around for laughs. The beauty of it is that Napoleon, in a well-juggled ending, turns out to be not so mad after all-or is he really much, much madder...