Deep below the streets of Jersey City, NJ Transit trains rumble back and forth through the Bergen Tunnels to and from Hoboken Terminal.


The 4,200-foot long tunnels cut through Bergen Hill, the southernmost end of the Hudson Palisades. 




The northern tunnel was built from 1873-1877 by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, with the southern tunnel opening in 1910. 

Partway through the tunnels are two large open-cut ventilation shafts, which also feature emergency exit staircases and standpipes for firefighting. 


At left is an older ventilation shaft, one of five that date back to the construction of the tunnels.


These were stabilized and backfilled during the 2001 renovation of the tunnels. In this view, GP40PH-2B no. 4208, the railroad's Conrail heritage unit - identifiable by its blue color, rather than the black roof of nearly every other NJT locomotive - is seen shoving non-revenue train X132 through the north tunnel on Track 1. Taken June 12, 2025.




in 1939 a 26-year-old Arkansas "Traveler" made the trip in 20 days., Herman Littrell completed a cross-country trip in his "Bath Tub Special" to get to the New York World's Fair, from the San Francisco Exposition.and made the trip in 20 days.



The car was named after Bob Burns, a highly popular American radio comedian and musical entertainer of the 1930s and 1940s. 

Burns was famous for inventing a bizarre, makeshift horn instrument crafted from copper pipes and a funnel, which he dubbed the "bazooka" (the word later used by the military to describe the rocket launcher). 

Because Burns was known nationwide for creating functional items out of scrap and household objects, naming a homemade washtub car the "Bob Burns Special" was a fitting tribute to his comedic persona.

Out of 13,000 AI-generated citations in Athens Greece, officers reviewed 5,500 and only approved 400, yet officials are calling the rollout a success

Of those reviewed, just 400 were judged valid. The other 5,100 were thrown out, split between 3,800 speeding violations and 1,300 covering mobile phone use, seatbelt non-compliance, and similar offenses. The two piles were rejected for completely different reasons. 

The 3,800 speeding citations were dropped automatically because they relied on average-speed calculations, a method Greece currently has no legislative framework to support, so that batch isn’t a software failure at all.

Police officers found that the software routinely mistook dark objects for smartphones and got tripped up by unrelated driver gestures, things like taking a vape hit or simply changing gears.

In several cases, the cameras flagged non-existent front-seat passengers for failing to wear a seatbelt, triggering automated notices for empty seats. In others, drivers were fined simply because their dark shirts blended into the seatbelt strap, confusing the camera’s visual sensors.

American journalist Martha Gellhorn tricked the Navy so that she could write firsthand dispatches from Normandy in June 1944, she lied to get on a hospital ship so she could be a stowaway and get transported to the D Day invasion!


She had already accompanied the US Fifth Army to the front in Monte Cassino, Italy in 1943. She wasn't worried about being in the middle of the war.

Although the US military refused permission for female journalists to cover the Allied landings, Gellhorn wasn't deterred. "To me, all the people in the rear who make rules, they exist to be thwarted," she said in 1991. 

Her defiance meant she was on the first hospital ship to reach Normandy, arriving at Omaha Beach early on the morning of 7 June, and becoming the only woman correspondent on the ground at the D-Day landings.

"somebody asked me before letting me board 
the hospital ship, what I was there for, and I said, 'I'm just going on this ship to interview the nurses – a woman's feature.'

"You could always get by with that. It always sounded harmless and idiotic, and it worked a treat. 'I'm just doing the woman's angle,' and nobody's interested anymore. And then I just locked myself in a toilet until after we left port."

During a career that spanned 60 years, the Missouri-born journalist covered the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Finland, and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. 

She befriended the Roosevelts and stayed with them at the White House, cadged bed and breakfast from HG Wells, and married Ernest Hemingway

She also wrote for Vogue magazine and reported on the Great Depression for the US government, travelling through the Dust Bowl with the photographer Dorothea Lange.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260608-the-woman-who-sneaked-into-the-d-day-landings

Thanks to Don for highly recommending the movie "Hemingway & Gellhorn". Martha Gellhorn is played by Nicole Kidman.

In Havana, 21-year-old Yadán Pablo Espinosa builds a homemade solar panel “factory,” equips 15 electric trikes, and boosts their range, a local fix that kept multiple workers’ livelihoods alive


The project is not a miracle cure for Cuba’s energy crisis, but for drivers who carry food, goods, and passengers through hot streets, traffic jams, and long workdays, a little extra power can mean more deliveries, fewer forced stops, and a better chance of bringing money home.

The setup also solves a very Cuban problem in a very practical way. The metal frame that holds the panel becomes a roof, shielding drivers from sun and rain while turning the vehicle itself into a small solar workstation.

Tuesday, June 09, 2026

Happy birthday to David Hobbs! He started racing in 1959 in his mom's Morris Oxford. Within three years, he was at Daytona driving someone else's Jaguar and lending his own Lotus Elite to Jimmy Clark.


The career that followed touched every corner of motorsport. 

Formula 1 for Honda, McLaren, and BRM. 
Sports cars in the Ford GT40, the Mirage, the Ferrari 512M, and Porsche 917s and 956/962s. 
IMSA Camel GT for BMW. 
Fifth place at the Indianapolis 500 in a McLaren. 
Championships in Formula 5000 and Trans-Am. 
He even led the Daytona 500 in a NASCAR stock car. 




A British driver leading the biggest stock car race in America. In the same career where he raced a Porsche 917 and a Ferrari 512M. 

 Twenty starts at Le Mans. Two third-place finishes. 
Two decades of returning to the same race, in different cars, for different teams, across different eras of the sport. 

After the driving Hobbs joined CBS in the early 1970s and became one of the most recognizable voices in American motorsport television, eventually working with SPEED.