Word: km
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...earthquake that rumbled through this desolate region on June 28 was an ominous force. In a few fearsome seconds, it rerouted roads, realigned parking lots and reconfigured the landscape in countless capricious ways, miraculously taking only one life. Rather than rupture a single fault line, it swiped a 70-km (45-mile) diagonal slash through several, at one point heaving up a raw ridge of rock roughly the size and shape of a stegosaurus' spine...
...past 96 years. The Chinese team was also a consistent surprise, and its women alone were everywhere one looked -- scoring all 10s in the uneven bars, winning an archery shoot-off with bull's-eye after bull's-eye after bull's-eye, even striding off with the 10-km walk. The Unified Team forgot its differences long enough to enjoy one last triumph, and the Americans had good reason to cheer the Dream Team, as their swimmers, boxers, spikers and pitchers failed to live up to every high expectation. The Kenyans, as usual, showed all comers how to carry...
...supposed to be another space spectacular, the kind NASA used to pull off like clockwork: astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis had plans to dangle a half-ton satellite on a 20.1-km (12 1/2-mile) tether, forming the biggest single orbiting object in history. But like so many of the space agency's ambitious projects lately, this one didn't quite work out. The Italian-made satellite rose properly from the shuttle on a 10-m (39-ft.) boom, but the astronauts couldn't pull out its auxiliary power cord. When they finally got the cord out and began unreeling...
Once airborne, the mosquito becomes a flying machine that puts state-of-the- art aeronautics to shame. Mosquitoes have range: though most live out their lives within a radius of a kilometer or two, some swamp species have been known to fly more than 160 km (100 miles). And they have maneuverability: a mosquito flying through a rainstorm can land safe and dry on the nape of your neck after dodging hundreds of drops that to it are as big as falling refrigerators...
...last year's eruption of Mount Pinatubo. When the Philippine volcano blew its top, it lofted some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. Since then, the stuff has circled the globe, forming a layer of droplets floating in the stratosphere, between 19 and 23 km (12 and 14 miles) above the surface. Scientists predicted that the droplets would act as a worldwide sun shield. Satellite measurements are proving they were right: the planet has cooled off about 0.5 degreesC (1 degreesF) since Pinatubo, erasing nearly a century's worth of rising temperatures. Unfortunately, the fallout will...