There were four men chiefly responsible for bringing Major League Baseball to Houston: George Kirksey and Craig Cullinan, who had led a futile attempt to purchase the St. Louis Cardinals in 1952 ; R. E.

The Conservative majority proved too small for effective control over his backbenchers, particularly after the United Kingdom's forced exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism ( ERM ) on " Black Wednesday ", 16 September 1992, just five months into the new parliament, when billions of pounds were spent in a futile attempt to defend the currency's value.

( 135 kg ) weight against the door in a futile attempt to stop the intruders from forcing their way in.

The attempt to freeze human evolution has in the past been a futile undertaking and has probably brought about more violence than if such a process had been controlled peacefully.

Contemptus mundi is the name given to the recognition that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy.

A futile attempt was made to criticize him as a free trader, when the most that could be said was that he refused to aggressively pursue higher tariffs to protect local products.

This causes Graulich and Gillespie to suggest that the general Aztec cyclical view of time, where events repeated themselves at the end and beginning of cycles or eras was being inscribed into the historical record by the Aztecs, making it futile to attempt to distinguish between a historical Topiltzin Ce Acatl and a Quetzalcoatl deity.

The Treaty of Troyes ( 1420 ) ceded it to the English, who had made a futile attempt to take it by siege in 1360 ; but French patriots expelled them on the approach of Joan of Arc, who in 1429 had Charles VII consecrated in the cathedral.

( Freud, in fact, was wont to stress that it was not merely futile but actually misleading to attempt to " explain " one part of the manifest content with reference to another part as if the manifest dream somehow constituted some unified or coherent conception ).

Russia organized a vigorous but hectic attempt to save the crew, and the entire futile effort was surrounded by unexplained secrecy.

He believes Mr. Lockwood is telling the truth, and inspects the window, opening it in a futile attempt to let Catherine's spirit in from the cold.

* Some of Lem's other novels with similar themes ( the futile attempt at communication with alien phenomena which possess apparent traits of intelligence ) are His Master's Voice, Fiasco, and The Invincible

However, in July 1871, Bonnell sold the improvements and leased the coal rights to the Wilkes-Barre Coal & Iron Co., and in February 1876, Bonnell sold the property outright to the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co. Lance, who moved to Philadelphia and became a mat manufacturer, spent years in court, suing his old friend Bonnell in a futile attempt to recover the mine.

Harry Sr. flew into a rage, beating his son with a razor strop in a futile attempt to get the boy to recant.

The Yorkshire branch later threatened a strike over the Government's plans for Wentworth, and Joe Hall wrote personally to Clement Attlee in a futile attempt to stop the mining.

Low on ammunition, the French had to resort to the bayonet in a futile attempt to drive the British back.

Deciding they had better leave, the crew make a desperate and futile attempt to engage Marvin's enthusiasm ( he " hasn't got one ") before he simply does what they really want and opens the door to the ship they want to steal.

Roger Ebert's review for the Chicago Sun-Times was :" Any attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile.

" Later tests established that neither the force of the explosion, nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes, presumably in a futile attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit after the crew cabin detached from the rest of the orbiter.

After a futile attempt to outrun the storm, Yelland recalls the strike force, and the ship and the aircraft return to 1980 safely.

Blackthorne leads his crew in a futile attempt to resist, but they are easily cowed by Omi, and one of his crew is taken out and boiled alive.

In 1980, a final attempt to win Harrison back proved futile ; and, impulsive and insecure, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol on 26 November 1980, at her home in Los Angeles.

Another futile attempt to dispossess the Ottomans of Poti was made by Russo-Georgian forces in 1770 and 1771.

In the face of defeat and imminent withdrawal of the Invincible, Rohan, the spaceship's navigator, undertakes a trip into the ' enemy area ' in search of 4 crew members who went missing in action — an attempt which he and captain Horpach see as certainly futile, but necessary for moral reasons.

The Urola line, formerly served by the Urola Railway, was closed by Eusko Trenbideak in 1986, after a futile attempt to renovate it.

As Powell said in an April 1, 2009 interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, the Doctrine denotes the exhausting of all " political, economic, and diplomatic means ," which, only if those means prove to be futile, should a nation resort to military force.

Instead Yang sent out a force in a futile bid to take back Emperor Xian.

The small force of bombers, never numbering more than 20 operational at any time, could do little to prevent the invasion of the Netherlands East Indies, launching valiant but futile attacks against the masses of Japanese shipping, with six lost in combat, six in accidents, and 26 destroyed on the ground.

As a consequence, Halsey dropped his pursuit of a Japanese carrier task force in a futile attempt to aid United States forces in the Battle off Samar.

However, despite obeying orders to prepare for the mission, Vice-Admiral Seiichi Itō — commander of the Ten-Go force — still refused to actually order his ships to carry it out, believing the plan to be futile and wasteful.

Malcolm said that relying on the federal government to force local governments to obey civil rights laws was futile.

Sally decides to take the company public to raise capital to pay off the larger bank, but with Adam's help this results in Cedric being able to buy enough shares to re-take control of Gardner Ross and force Sally out for ordering Marty to keep buying Gardner Ross stock in a futile attempt to stop him, technically violating capital requirements.

Attempts to force this bottleneck were futile, and the battalion took up defensive positions for the night.

If comfort exists it is because the plight of humanity if futile or repetitive is at least shared, even if no intercourse exists .” The two men work together to remove themselves from whatever external or elemental ( see “ Mana ”) force may be behind the goad ; it counters by adding wheels.

After a second futile attempt to take the Confederate position by two Union brigades, Miles attacked again with his entire force in mid-afternoon and overwhelmed the Confederates.

Confederates then seized the Legion's commissary supplies on the edge of town, and fired two warning shots into the downtown from their artillery, convincing Jordan that continued resistance was futile and leading him to surrender his force and Corydon.

( Bo himself declined comment, but later in an open letter to a reader suggested that all of the views were, indeed, correct — that Jiang's fatal errors were to drain the energy of his people, but that he was indeed a loyal man, willing to lay down his life in a futile attempt to reestablish Shu.

There in the open steppe resistance was futile, but nevertheless many, despite their hatred of Communism, refused to collaborate with the invaders of their country.

important for Singapore and Malaya to remain " culturally open ", that culture was something to be left for the people to build up, and that for the government to institute " a sarong culture, complete with pantun competitions and so forth " was futile.

The Knights ' governor on Gozo, Galatian de Sesse, having decided that resistance was futile, threw open the doors to the citadel.

By this time she had learned that it was futile to argue with her young husband, yet the uncomfortable fact remained: the American Congregationalists were sending them as missionaries to the Far East and paying their salaries.

An argument with Orville Torrence Killpath was as frustrating and as futile as a cap pistol on a firing range.

Afonso IV was displeased with his son's choice of lovers, and hoped that the relationship would be a futile one.

Some astronomers endeavoured to explain this by parallax, but these attempts were futile, for the motion was at variance with that which parallax would produce.

Elijah speaks with sharp irony: in the religious ambivalence of Israel, she is engaging in a wild and futile religious " dance ".

Perhaps in response to Hamilcar's raids, Rome did build another fleet paid for with donations from wealthy citizens and it was that fleet which rendered the Carthaginian success in Sicily futile, as the stalemate Hamilcar produced in Sicily became irrelevant following the Roman naval victory at the Battle of the Aegates Islands in 241 BC, where the new Roman fleet under consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus was victorious over an undermanned and hastily built Carthaginian fleet.

By early February Adenauer finally realized that all talk and all attempts at compromise with the Nazis were futile.

The Hobbit may be read as Tolkien's parable of World War I with the hero being plucked from his rural home and thrown into a far-off war where traditional types of heroism are shown to be futile.

In his Summa Totius Logicae, i. 12, Ockham cites the principle of economy, Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.

Pius VI has been accused of having led a futile and immoral life, of having neglected his duties and of having been bad-tempered and even brutal with his attendants.

The Union army's futile frontal attacks on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates.

" There was much parleying and some skirmishing with the natives, and earnest but futile attempts were made to recover the men captured the previous year.

According to his lengthy New York Times obituary, " e concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life.

Of these five, he is the most reluctant to go along with their plans or adventures, but does not oppose them because he believes it to be futile to try.

On 18 October, after futile attempts to contact Ibrahim Pasha, Codrington, in conference with his Allied colleagues, took the fateful decision to enter Navarino bay and anchor his ships face-to-face with the Ottoman / Egyptian fleet.

This episode is a symbolic capitulation to the inevitability of his death at the Western Front, a fate he shares with the poet, Wilfred Owen to which in a futile battle that takes place a few days before the Armistice, Billy and his friend Wilfred Owen are killed.

This failure caused Joseph to seek territorial expansion in the Balkans, where he became involved in an expensive and futile war with the Turks ( 1787 – 1791 ).

He soon ceded Italy to his eldest son, Louis, and remained in his new kingdom, engaging in alternate quarrels and reconciliations with his brothers and in futile efforts to defend his lands from the attacks of the Northmen ( as Vikings were known in Frankish writings ) and the Saracens.

Imprisoned by Augustus as an incentive to hasten his research, Böttger was obliged to work with other alchemists in the futile search for transmutation and was eventually assigned to assist Tschirnhaus.