Слово "vicissitude". Англо-русский словарь Мюллера

Centuries from now, France, England, Germany, and Russia, despite the vicissitudes they will have encountered, will still be individual historical units, the essential pieces of a checkerboard, whose squares constantly vary in importance and size but are never wholly confused with each other.

'When is the last train?' I asked the ticket seller, who sat in the yellow light behind his window, his bald head glistening, like a small-town Buddha utterly secure and immune to all vicissitudes.

Jack stood there, streaming with sweat, streaked with brown earth, stained by all the vicissitudes of a day’s hunting.

The dominance rapidly assumed by the Frankish Empire reestablished the unity of the west for a period; but this empire was irreparably shattered around the middle of the ninth century; the Treaty of Verdun3 traced divisions that were immutable in principle and, from then on, France, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain set off on paths, often circuitous and through a thousand vicissitudes, to their full national existence, such as we see it blossoming today.