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cruise missiles
( in rocket and missile system: Matador and other programs )
The third postwar U.S. cruise missile effort was the Matador, a ground-launched, subsonic missile designed to carry a 3,000-pound warhead to a range of more than 600 miles. In its early development, Matador’s radio-controlled guidance, which was limited essentially to the line of sight between the ground controller and the missile, covered less than the missile’s potential range. However, in...
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cruise missiles rocket and missile system
The third postwar U.S. cruise missile effort was the Matador, a ground-launched, subsonic missile designed to carry a 3,000-pound warhead to a range of more than 600 miles. In its early development, Matador’s radio-controlled guidance, which was limited essentially to the line of sight between the ground controller and the missile, covered less than the missile’s potential range. However, in...
in bullfighting, the principal performer who works the capes and usually dispatches the bull with a sword thrust between the shoulder blades. Though most bullfighters have been men, women bullfighters have participated in the spectacle for centuries. (For greater detail on bullfighters, see bullfighting.)
The techniques used by modern matadors date from about 1914, when Juan Belmonte revolutionized the ancient spectacle. Formerly, the main object of the fight had been only to prepare the bull for the sword thrust. But Belmonte, a small, slight Andalusian, emphasized the danger to the matador by close and graceful capework, and the kill became secondary. He worked closer to the bull’s horns than had ever been believed possible and became an overnight sensation. Several matadors were killed trying to imitate Belmonte’s style.
The possibility of death and the matador’s disdain for and skillful avoidance of injury thrills the crowd. Audiences judge matadors according to their skill, grace, and daring. Therefore, bullfights, or corridas, are viewed by many people not so much as struggles between bullfighters and bulls but as contests between bullfighters and themselves. How close will the bullfighter let the horns come? How far will the matador go to please the crowd? As with trapeze performers in a circus, the audience does not want to see the performer injured or killed, but it is the display of courage amid the dangerous possibility of...
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bullfighting bullfighting
...himself was an amateur torero and produced several other bullfighting films. Award-winning director Pedro Almodóvar has also made films involving bullfighting, including Matador (1986), which was roundly criticized in Spain for its negative portrayal of the corrida, and Hable con ella (2002; Talk to Her), which...
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bullfighting bullfighting
...as horns. Two additional American novels help explain the spectacle to English-speaking readers: Tom Lea’s The Brave Bulls (1949) and Barnaby Conrad’s Matador (1952), the former about a Mexican matador and the latter about a doomed Spaniard.
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bullfighting bullfighting
In English there are few books that truly reflect or understand the spectacle. One of the first to do so faithfully was Frank Harris’s Montes the Matador and Other Stories (1900). But the first truly accurate, comprehensive, and unblinking overview of bullfighting in English—and certainly the most influential—was Ernest Hemingway’s Death in...
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