Word: workaday
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Workaday Fatalism. Sixteen times the U.S. has rocketed men far into space without so much as a stubbed-toe casualty. There had been the heart-stopping suspense of Alan Shepard's first flat-arc flight in 1961, the terrifying uncertainty of John Glenn's reentry into the atmosphere in a heat-seared Mercury craft in 1962, and Gus Grissom's hairbreadth escape from drowning when his Liberty Bell 7 was swamped in the Atlantic. Then came the miraculously flawless series of ten Gemini trips, in which Americans repeatedly broke all records for survival in space, strolled blithely...
Everyone feared, and some had warned, that some day, somewhere, such a string of luck would have to snap. The astronauts have always approached their jobs with the workaday fatalism of men who live with death at their elbows. When John Glenn returned from his harrowing trip, he cautioned: "We are going to have failures. There are going to be sacrifices made in the program; we have been lucky so far." Grissom himself said in words that may long be remembered: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that...
...Lack of money stalled them until Williams, another Douglas alumnus and the owner of Hydroforming, an aircraft-parts-making company, bought a controlling interest in Hayden in 1958. Williams was sure that "an updated version of the Tri-Motor was just the plane to fill the gaps" left in workaday air transport by the emphasis on faster jet aircraft. Williams ultimately absorbed the project into his own company and hatched the first Bushmaster 2000 in 1966. In November, the son of the Tin Goose made its first flight...
Mayor Richard Daley's administration, which has been eying the Negro ghettos apprehensively for the past three summers, was astonished that the season's first serious outburst had occurred in the Puerto Rican district. Yet, beneath its quiet workaday surface, Division Street had long been simmering with discontent. Proud and hardworking, yet insecure and frustrated in a strange land, the Puerto Ricans have been all but ignored by city hall, which cannot even say with any degree of accuracy how many Puerto Ricans live in the city's boundaries. (Estimates range all the way from...
...Harvard baseball team descends again to the workaday world this weekend after its 27-9 soar into Brandies could-cuckoo land. But the Crimson will land with a thud unless the hitters can scrape up some runs against Columbia today and Army Saturday...