Word: woke
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...American World Airways' El Presidente winged northward across the Brazilian jungles, one of its four engines ran rough. The steward woke the 38 passengers, explaining that their Stratocruiser would have to land for brief repairs at Belem, near the mouth...
...like the J-57, for the U.S. had been behind in the jet engine race. It had been caught napping at the start when jet propulsion began to revolutionize air power. Both the Germans (in 1939) and the British (in 1941) actually flew jet fighters before the U.S. even woke up to the fact that jet engines were practical. Thanks to Britain's foresight, and the fact that U.S. engine makers were forced to concentrate on piston engines during the war, the British stayed ahead in jets. With his J-57, Rentschler thinks he has overtaken them...
...forklift truck, major instrument of the change, is at least 32 years old. But it was not until World War II, when the U.S. Navy used forklift trucks to perform prodigious feats of loading & unloading battle cargo, that U.S. industry woke up to the fact that it had been squandering its manpower by doing most of its lifting by hand. It was paying $9 billion a year, roughly one-fourth of the total U.S. factory payroll, just to pick things up and set them down...
...feather trade was bringing in $5,000,000 a year, second only to Kimberley's diamond mines. Wild speculation broke out in land and feathers. Prices flew up to $500 a lb. in 1913, before the inevitable crash. Many an ostrich tycoon went to bed a millionaire and woke up bankrupt. Some of them trekked southward to raise oranges; the gaudy Victorian mansions they had built slowly fell to pieces in a weird jumble of white gables and green cupolas. Max Rose, who came to South Africa from Lithuania in 1890, was one of the few ex-millionaires...
...tell how Rosenberg had planned an escape for the Greenglass family in February 1950, when the arrest of the British spy, Dr. Klaus Fuchs, had tipped the conspirators off to the fact that the FBI and Scotland Yard were hot on their trails. "Julius came to my house and woke me up," Greenglass testified. "Julius said Harry Gold was one of Fuchs's contacts, and that Gold would undoubtedly be arrested soon and that would lead to Julius. He said I would have to leave the country...