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#1 The 2011 earthquake in Japan struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which was designed to withstand a large earthquake, but not a 50-foot tsunami. The reactor was severely damaged, and many feared that the uranium inside would explode like an atomic bomb.
#2 A nuclear bomb is made when a nuclear reactor blows up. In a nuclear reactor, the uranium is typically...
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#1 Piracy has been around since the Bronze Age, when the Mediterranean was a hotbed for piratical activity. The word pirate comes from the ancient Greek word piero, which means to make an attempt.
#2 The geography of the sea, as well as political reasons, helped piracy take off in the ancient world. People did their best to thwart it, but it was hard to stop pirates...
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#1 I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was constantly getting into trouble, and I dreamed of adventure. I eventually joined the Army National Guard at age 17, and went off to basic training between my junior and senior years.
#2 I loved flying, and I was good at it. I was eventually cleared to solo, and on my way to becoming a pilot. I was having the...
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#1 Mossad is the most intriguing intelligence service. It operates on behalf of a country that is surrounded by enemy states, and its citizens are constantly threatened by war. Nevertheless, they are the best intelligence service in the world.
#2 The CIA may have more technical resources, but no intelligence service is more feared than Mossad. The popular view of its...
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#1 Mervin Kelly, the boy who would become the author's grandfather, was a striver. He was both class president and valedictorian in high school, and people in Gallatin noticed that he was intent on being in charge.
#2 In the early 1900s, when Kelly was going to school, few Americans recognized the differences between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor. The public...
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#1 At the mouth of the harbor, El Morro, a massive brown escarpment, rose up out of the sea. The Central America was the biggest ship in the harbor. She was sleek and black, her decks scrubbed smooth with holystones, and her deckhouses glistened with the yellowed patina of old varnish.
#2 The final five days of the journey were spent sailing to New York. The weather...
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#1 The worst nuclear accident in American history began with a clog in the basement of a lonely hour. The plant's operators were unable to figure out what the hell was going on, and the taint of that chaos would linger for hours.
#2 The control room was extremely busy that day. The water level in the reactor's pulmonary loop, which cools the reactor, was dropping. The...
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#1 Flying was expensive in 1972, so most Americans took car trips instead. My parents were no exception. They always took car trips to visit my father's relatives in Indiana.
#2 I was 10 years old in 1967, and I was excited to visit Expo 67 in Montreal. My mother, however, was terrified of the bridge collapse and the island sinking, so we didn't go. I was ready...
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#1 The choice of where to live is often made based on the most beautiful place on earth. For me, that is Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself, but the country which surrounds it.
#2 I woke up before sunrise and looked out the window at a scene dim and vague with flowing mists. Outside, the ground was covered with snow. It was cold as a tomb, a jail, or a cave. I lay down on the...
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#1 On the night of the Titanic's maiden voyage, lookout Frederick Fleet saw an iceberg directly ahead. He banged the crow's-nest bell three times, warning of danger ahead, but the ship didn't turn.
#2 The passengers in their cabins felt the jar. Some felt it was like a heavy wave striking the ship, while others thought it was nothing at all.
#3 Some of the passengers...
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#1 John Flannery, the man about to take over leadership of the most famous company in America, had come to see GE Power leaders on their home turf. Under the surface, however, GE was in total disarray.
#2 Flannery was the new CEO of GE, and he had to get used to his new position. He had outperformed three rival executives to win the position, and his father had died...
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#1 The fourth R is research. Everyone can learn to use online information more efficiently and effectively, whether they're students, citizens, parents, or professionals. This book makes the case that learning how to be a better online researcher is not just a good idea but something that everyone should know how to do.
#2 Research is a skill that we all take for granted....
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#1 The human factor is what saves the crew of Apollo 13. It is what saves the crew of Apollo 13 when all the glittering technology seems useless.
#2 I was excited to be at the Cape Canaveral launch site, as I had been assigned to NASA to help with the American space program. I was shocked to see that the base looked like any other military base.
#3 I had never driven...
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#1 The telegraph, a system of sending messages or information to a distant place, was invented in 1746. It was a big deal because it suggested that it should be possible to harness electricity to build a signaling device that could send messages over great distances incomparably faster than a human messenger could carry them.
#2 In 1617, Famianus Strada, a learned...
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#1 On December 3, 2014, Sagrario Gonzalez was leaving the Central Library in Springfield, Massachusetts, with her niece and daughter. She chose to take the quicker path across State Street, instead of the safer one through the grass. She was struck and killed by a vehicle.
#2 What happened that night on State Street seems clear. Gonzalez made a series of bad choices....
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#1 The latitude and longitude lines govern the world today, as they have for centuries. They were first mapped out by Ptolemy in his first world atlas in AD 150.
#2 The difference between latitude and longitude is that the zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time. To find...
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#1 The final season of fantasy TV series Game of Thrones was premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. It was a send-off to the most-watched show in the history of HBO.
#2 The Radio City premiere was a bittersweet affair, as the company was undergoing a massive restructuring process. Richard Plepler, the company's longtime New York headquarters building's...
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#1 The idea that changed the world was conceived by Jack Kilby at the height of summer, when everyone else was on vacation. It was an idea of cosmic dimensions, and it would eventually win Kilby the Nobel Prize in Physics.
#2 In the 1950s, Americans were excited about the future, and magazines were happy to feed that appetite. The major breakthroughs in biology, genetics,...
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#1 I am one of the few who have survived a plane crash from a great height. The crash shaped the rest of my life and led me to where I am today. It was my good fortune that I had spent a few years of my young life in the jungle.
#2 I fell in love with the jungle when I was young, and I have spent my life preserving it. The rain forest is not only full of wonders, but...
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#1 The treasure was buried five feet down in the South Carolina soil, in the shadow of a gnarled tulip poplar tree. But the tale doesn't end there. Legrand found the code on a parchment washed up from a shipwreck.
#2 Claude Shannon was a boy who loved to tinker with things. When he was young, he built a fence that could carry electricity between two houses and used it...
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