Word: fatalism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anything. That was more than 1,900 years ago-and I'm not so sure he was meek and humble." Then, in August, 1959, Dooley underwent chest surgery at New York's Memorial Hospital for melanoma-a rapidly diffusing form of cancer that is almost always quickly fatal...
Along with the unforeseeable misfortunes-Jack's near-fatal illness, Jackie's two miscarriages-the Kennedys had some basic areas of incompatibility, and both were vigorous, determined individuals with emphatic tastes. Jack was a meat-and-potatoes man; Jackie favored the haute cuisine of France. Her arty friends bored him (on one occasion, when the lively arts dominated the dinner conversation, Jack simply left the table and retired early). The Senator thrived on large crowds of people; his lady preferred intimate groups of close friends. Jack read American history; Jackie wolfed down four or five novels, ranging from...
...Duck with Moxie. Jackie took pains to study and analyze each member of the Kennedy family. Once, in Palm Beach, she was 15 minutes late to lunch with her father-in-law. "That can be fatal with Joe when he's in one of his Emperor Augustus moods," says Investment Banker Charles Spalding, who was present. "So when she came in, he started to give her the needle, but she gave it right back. Old Joe has a lot of old-fashioned slang phrases, so Jackie told him: 'You ought to write a series of grandfather stories...
...submit to painstaking, yearly physical examinations. The idea: to see if the onset of ailments in general could be accurately forecast by physiological measurements, i.e., weight, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, cholesterol count. So far, among other diseases, 27 of the businessmen have suffered heart attacks, 16 of them fatal. The common element in 18 of the cases was high (240-360) cholesterol levels. Moreover, it was the only significant common element. The electrocardiograph, says Keys, "doesn't hurt anybody and looks impressive in a doctor's office," but it is a poor predictor of coronary disease...
...test pilots put the plane through 100 hours of landings, take-offs and dives. In the most severe test, an engine mount was deliberately weakened to test the margin of safety. The pilots, wearing parachutes, put the plane into a 418-mile-an-hour power dive, but the fatal vibration never showed...