Saturday, June 29, 2024
This 1953 Fageol delivery van was reportedly used as a moving van before being displayed at the Golden Age of Trucking Museum in Middlebury, Connecticut. Now it's for sale on Bring a Trailer
a WW2 White half track was left on Boulder Mountain in Utah roughly in the 1960s, and became a part of the Dixie National Forest near Bryce Canyon... until last week, when it was actually stolen. The park service can't figure out how it was stolen
Forest rangers don't know exactly how it ended up in the Boulder Mountain Row Lakes area or how it was used likely after the war, but it may have been placed there five or six decades ago.
The Insider, a local newspaper in the region, reported in 2017 the vehicle was purchased and brought to the region to help with logging efforts in Boulder Mountain during the 1950s. One of the men explained to the outlet the vehicle was left there in 1954 after it suffered engine failure as the team tried to move it off the mountain through heavy snow. It had been there ever since.
it had been there for long enough that it had become Forest Service property and an archaeological piece of the land. Therefore it was protected by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
On June 25, 2024, Marines made their first landing on the Pacific island of Peleliu's renovated World War II airfield. This puts Marine aircraft within 1,000 miles of Manila, Philippines.
Guam, which has seen a flood of military investment, construction and is the planned future home of a new Marine littoral regiment in the coming years, is about 1,500 miles from the Philippines.
The Corps isn’t the only service ramping up its air-focused installations in the region. In March, the Air Force announced a $400 million upgrade to its airfield on the tiny Pacific island of Yap, about 1,000 miles southeast of China and part of the Federated States of Micronesia.
it took 6 years for Vermont to admit that freedom of speech is something they can't ignore, and can't arrest someone for. Now, they owe a guy 175,000 to settle a case from 2018 when he shot a state trooper the bird
Bombard’s First Amendment rights were violated after an unnecessary traffic stop and retaliatory arrest in 2018.
Bombard was stopped again and arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, and his car was towed.
Under the settlement, the state has agreed to pay Bombard $100,000 and $75,000 to the ACLU of Vermont and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression for legal fees.
“This incident should never have happened in the first place,” said Hillary Rich, staff attorney for the ACLU of Vermont, “Police need to respect everyone’s First Amendment rights — even for things they consider offensive or insulting.”
Bombard said in a statement provided by the ACLU that he hopes the Vermont State Police will train its troopers “to avoid silencing criticism or making baseless car stops.”
Trooper Jay Riggen stopped Bombard’s vehicle in St. Albans on Feb. 9, 2018, because he believed Bombard had shown him the middle finger, according to the lawsuit. Bombard denied that but says he did curse and display the middle finger once the initial stop was concluded.
Under the settlement, the state has agreed to pay Bombard $100,000 and $75,000 to the ACLU of Vermont and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression for legal fees.
“This incident should never have happened in the first place,” said Hillary Rich, staff attorney for the ACLU of Vermont, “Police need to respect everyone’s First Amendment rights — even for things they consider offensive or insulting.”
Bombard said in a statement provided by the ACLU that he hopes the Vermont State Police will train its troopers “to avoid silencing criticism or making baseless car stops.”
Truckers told not to drive recalled Kenworths and Peterbilts due to risk of 'complete loss of steering control'
I just learned that Virginia actually allows people to drive without insurance, if they pay $600 yearly fee.
Take a moment to ponder... if these people do not have a car insurance policy, and they travel out of state, and have a car collision, and they do a lot of damage to someone else, how does that person get their car fixed?
Just a thought
traffic on the 5 between the 78 and 76 on Saturday afternoon... there was no reason other than there were so many cars all travelling towards San Diego from North of San Diego county
there were miles of brake lights. But people keep moving to San Diego... I can't figure out where they are getting the water to supply them with that basic necessity, or finding parking for them at work, but there are so many new apartment complexes and condos being built!
real bumper stickers (not the die cut decals common today) history
Ray Stanton Avery is often credited as the creator of the modern-day sticker, thanks to his invention of the first pressure-sensitive label. Avery would then go on to create the first commercial labels and the bumper sticker was born!
As for customized bumper stickers, credit goes to Forrest P. Gill, who lived in Kansas City, Missouri and in the 1940s took some adhesive-backed paper, a bit of fluorescent paint and combined them to create the first ever bumper sticker (although back then they were known as “bumper strips”!).
Over time, the process of how bumper stickers were made had to be adjusted, as ol’ Gill’s creation was messy and not streamlined as they were handmade.
Using flexography became popular in the '50s, as it allowed printers to pass self-adhesive vinyl through presses for quicker production. By the 1960s however, the General Press was invented by James Black. Shortly after, this became the screen-printing standard and the prominent method for printing stickers.
https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/a-quick-history-of-the-car-bumper-sticker-136853/
The bumper sticker as we know it today can be traced back to a screen printer in Kansas City, Mo. named Forrest P. Gill. In the 1940s, Gill found himself with a surplus of two wartime technologies: adhesive-backed paper and fluorescent paint. He combined the two and the bumper sticker was born. His new creation was a significant improvement over handmade signs that fell off cars or easily wore down.
The first early adopters of bumper stickers were tourist sites. Instead of having a single sign on the side of the road, destinations now had countless ads traveling across the country. Gill’s first large volume request was 25,000 bumper stickers for Marine Gardens in Clearwater, Fl. (The company Gill founded is still around today and still selling bumper stickers.)
Early widespread uses of the advertising bumper sticker were for tourist attractions, such as Marine Gardens, Florida, Seven Falls, Colorado, Meramec Caverns in Missouri, and Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Another popular advertisement was the "See Rock City" sticker. In the 1940s and 1950s, visitors to the site had a sticker applied to their car, which duplicated the famous signs painted on the roofs of barns throughout the southeastern USA. Tourist attraction staff would circulate through the parking lot, applying the promotional sticker to every car.
The popularity of bumper stickers took a major step forward during the 1952 presidential election between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. It was the first election to include the use of bumper stickers as advertising materials. They have since been used in every U.S. presidential election.
In 1989, a man with a bumper sticker containing indecent wording was convicted. The man's conviction was reversed in Cunningham v. State (1991). The court referenced the First Amendment, stating "the provision regulating profane words on bumper stickers reaches a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech and unconstitutionally restricts freedom of expression"
https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/auto-history/bumper-stickers/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_sticker
https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/9874
It's probably fair to say that the end of the traditional bumper sticker coincided with the beginning of plastic covered bumpers, and the birth of the window suction cup caution signs, like Baby on Board, then the license plate trim ring advertising
spotted on Supernatural, season 1, episodes 18-21
69 Camaro SS and roughly 64 or 65 Corvette
Gremlin towing an Airstream
This caused me to wonder, what was the origin of the "Green Hornet"? Was it this bomber? Did this inspire the tv show with Bruce Lee?
The Green Hornet was created in 1936 by George W. Trendle, Fran Striker, and radio director James Jewell for the radio station WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan.
The character was inspired by the success of Trendle and Striker's previous radio hit, The Lone Ranger, and was intended to be a modern-day relative of the Lone Ranger.
He drove a 1937 Lincoln Zephyr in the "serial" motion pictures
Friday, June 28, 2024
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I haven't been to the Bronx Pizza (on Washington in Hillcrest) in years, since before covid at least... and this is new to me, but a cool addition to their pizza place
a pretty darn good representation of a subway
Atlantic City Airshow 2017
Thursday, June 27, 2024
there still is zero news on John Force's injuries, or IF he got badly injured, OR NOT. The family and hospital STILL haven't said what his injuries might be!
unspecified possible head injury has him in the "a neuro intensive care unit for an unspecified head injury"
https://www.thedrive.com/news/john-force-transferred-to-neuro-icu-days-after-300-mph-crash
Why did they even bother, this isn't news. Moving from the trauma ward to the ICU, is that from bad to worse? Or bad to better?
cool nose art on the B-29 "Katie"
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=156761560366053&set=pb.100080966302726.-2207520000
Tex Avery's wolves had this girl chasing schtick, but longer muzzles and ears, so maybe Disney?
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
you know how in March and April, I post Happy 413 Day, and 327, 318, all the engine sizes? And it's a good thing? Well, it's 626 day, and there ain't much that's ever been interesting about a 626, except that this one was almost on the Peking to Paris rally
“When the 1982 rally event was canceled, Martin pushed it back into his dealership,” explained the owner. “It just kind of sat there for a while, then the dealership changed hands in the mid- to late-80s… I think that’s when it finally left the dealership.”
In November 1981, MotorSport reported that the event had been delayed from its initial intended start in June 1982, citing that the Soviet Union was not onboard with allowing competitors to pass through.
It’s a shame, too, because there were some guys who intended to race the last ever Checker cab while running the taxi meter the whole way. Whoever guessed the fare at the end would win a prize.
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
A man was taken into custody after police said he stole a skid-steer from a construction site and took it on a joyride in downtown Nashville.... to use it to steal a barrel of Jack Daniel’s
Hey, we all thought he was an idiot until we read about the barrel of whiskey, am I right?
an Australian driver in Sydney was fined $387 after traffic cameras photographed her holding phone—or a sunglasses case
A woman in Syndey was upset to learn that proving she owns a case consistent with the image is immaterial to the enforcing agency—whose name, "Revenue NSW", seems to offer a clue about the priorities at hand.
In May a Sydney driver was wrongly fined $387 and 10 demerit points for handling his wallet while behind the wheel, while another driver last year was fined $362 for holding a children's toy.
What stopped ice cream trucks from roaming Orillia Ontario? The new permitting process made it too expensive, as it has 2 components an ice cream vendor can't afford
an $861 licensing fee and proof of $2 million in general liability insurance
“I’ve been in the business for 38 years, and I’ve been licensed by eight different cities, and the most I ever paid was $300,” Barrie-based business owner Nick Karabetsos wrote in his letter. “I just renewed my licence for Barrie and it was $265, Alcona was $300, Alliston was $170 (a) couple (of) years ago. $900 is more than triple the going rate for the same-size city.”
a four-foot-long wiper blade is too much for the Tesla cyber truck's wiper motor to handle, and caused a recall... wasn't it obvious to the stupidest engineer on staff that a long blade needed a bigger motor to push the weight of water off the windshield?
there were multiple reports of malfunctioning wipers prior to the recall, which is due to the wiper motor controller failing as a result of “electrical overstress,” as NHTSA describes.
The wiper motors have been failing due to “electrical overstress” during functional testing, which sounds like the components failed due to harsh functionality trials. But Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid tells Reuters that the wiper motor failures “shouldn’t come as a surprise,” and goes on to say, “This is the largest individual wiper ever used on a light duty vehicle with a 4-foot-long (1.22 meter) blade.
That exceptional long lever arm puts a lot of stress on the motor and there have been a lot of anecdotal reports popping up since early in production of failures.”
Monday, June 24, 2024
B-24 'Doodlebug' of the 373rd Bomb Squadron, 308th Bomb Group.
Doodlebug was one of the original nine B-24D's assigned to the 373rd BS.
Lt Bernard O'Hara and his crew flew the B-24 to China, leaving the United States on 15 February 1943 with the rest of the 308th BG.
At the Tenth Air Force air depot at Agra, in India, a number of the 308th BG's B-24D's possibly including Doodlebug, had nose art painted on them by a Cpl A C Mitchell, who was stationed at the depot.
In the first version of Doodlebug's nose art the comely young lady sat naked on the bomb - a bathing suit was added later.
The aircraft's mission list provides a graphic illustration of the logistical problems that confronted the 308th BG in China. During the bomber's ten months in-theater, Doodlebug and its crews flew 11 bombing missions and more than 50 sorties over the 'Hump' ferrying gasoline, bombs and other supplies for the 308th.
The aircraft's gunners claimed ten Japanese fighters shot down and 18 probably destroyed in a running battle lasting 25 minutes during the disastrous mission to Haiphong on 15 September 1943 when a large group of fighters attacked the small 373rd BS formation. SSgt Charles E Edwards and TSgt Joseph E Murry both claimed three fighters destroyed and five probables. JAAF aircraft downed three of the five 373rd B-24's attacking Haiphong and damaged a fourth so badly that it crashed on landing back at Kunming. Doodlebug was the only bomber to return safely to Yangkai.