Word: take-off
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...bird's soft body becomes a hard projectile that can easily whack a hole in the edge of a wing; jet engines suck up birds like giant vacuum cleaners and suffer serious internal damage. One Dutch military pilot was almost killed when his jet inhaled five gulls on take-off and crashed into a barrier. Another crashed after vacuuming a flock of partridges. In 1959, 25% of Dutch military aircraft was out of action because of bird trouble...
Athletes use a variety of bars, braces and frames that can be adjusted to just the right inch or angle to strengthen a muscle for a particular job (one high jumper successfully trained by straining against a device that held his take-off leg at the exact angle from which it started its spring). The Green Bay Packers were one of the first major pro football teams to adopt isometrics, and some credit the exercises for their brilliant seasons in 1961 and 1962, after which other teams caught on-and caught up. "It's the greatest thing the world...
...Potato. The first routine was purest comedy-a sort of take-off on that old kids' game, hot potato. With a first down on the Pittsburgh five, Tittle pitched back to Gifford, who started around left end. Oops! Too many Steelers. So Gifford lateraled to Center Greg Larson, who looked at the ball and lateraled to Y. A. Tittle, who looked at the Steelers again. Now, Tittle is no coward, but there are no 37-year-old fools in pro football, either. Back it went to Gifford, who was now over on the right sideline looking for someplace...
...give up and eject, parachuting minutes later onto the Mojave Desert with burns on the left side of his face and neck, probably caused by ignition of the oxygen in his mask. The scheduled later assault on the Russian-held world altitude record from ground take-off (113,890 ft.) was scrubbed-and a colleague added an understated postscript to the incident: "The colonel stayed with the plane a little longer than personal safety would have dictated...
...most interesting of the postwar digs was conducted by Professor Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago, whose longtime project has been to search for evidence of the great moment when the first men turned from wandering hunters to settled farmers. This invention of agriculture was the take-off point for human civilization-before it, all was savagery. Apparently the big switch may have come 12,000 years ago in northern Iraq, where Braidwood found a primitive agricultural hamlet, which he calls Jarmo...