History of First Cars

Lambert and Duryea are not your average household names. But most likely you’ve heard the names Ford and Benz (as in Mercedes-Benz). All of these names are related to one of the most important inventions of all time, the automobile.

Though Henry Ford is well known in American history for making the automobile affordable to the average person in the early 1900’s, he was not the first producer of the automobile. By 1860, the gasoline engine had been invented in Europe and in 1885, Karl Benz had introduced the first gasoline powered automobile. His car ran on 3 wheels and looked like a very big tricycle that had no pedals and could hold two people. In America, the first gasoline-powered auto to grace the rough horse and buggy roads was in 1891. The man to build this car was John W. Lambert. When one man saw this contraption coming down the road for the first time, he thought to himself “where in heaven’s name is the horse?”

The idea of the “horseless carriage” caught on quickly. By 1893, two brothers, Charles and Frank Duryea built their own gasoline powered car. It had a one-cylinder engine with a three-speed transmission. The first run of their car went about 7.5 miles per hour and they were able to get it to go 200 feet until a mound of dirt in the road got in its way and stopped it! This was a far cry from the distance that Benz was able to get his car to go (about 65 miles).

The Duryea brothers did not give up. In fact, they considered their 200 feet ride a huge success. Frank Duryea built the next car by himself. After two years of fine-tuning the car, the Duryea brothers gathered enough interest from investors to start the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. In 1896, they built 13 almost identical models of the Duryea Motor Wagon. Although this sounds like a very small number of cars to produce, it was actually a significant number because it was the first time anyone ever tried to mass produce automobiles. Unfortunately, this mass production company didn’t last long. At a cost of $1,000 to $2,000 a car, the average American couldn’t afford a Duryea Motor Wagon. After 13 were built, the brothers sold their company.

The Duryea brothers paved the way for men like Henry Ford to mass produce and sell automobiles at a price that everyone could afford. Let’s give them the credit they deserve for a job well done!

Facts of Sports

• The first recorded reference to cricket dates back to 1272.
• The highjump method of jumping head first and landing on their back is called the Fosbury Flop.
• Clay pigeon shooting was once known as Inanimate bird shooting.
• The American dart game 'Cricket' is known in Britain as 'Mickey Mouse'.
• Australian Ron Clarke set 18 World Records as a long distance runner but never won an Olympic title.
• The motto for the Olympic Games is Citius - Altius - Fortius (Faster - Higher - Stronger).
• The 180m sprint of the776 BC Olympics (the earliest recorded) was won by Coroebus .
• Cricketer Dennis Lillee once tried to use an Aluminium bat of his own design called 'The Combat'.
• The large disk used in Tiddlywinks is called a Squidger.
• A racehorse which has never won a race is refereed to as a Maiden.
• Orienteering originated in Sweden.
• Snooker originated in India.
• The first reference to a money prise in a horse race is a prise offered by Richard I in 1195.
• Darts is the most popular sport played in Britain.
• The word 'love' meaning 'no score' comes from the word ' L`oeuf ' which means 'egg'.
• A soccer ball has 32 panels.
• Draughts is older than chess.
• To a yachtsman, a fresh breeze is about 20 knots.
• The first automobile racetrack in America was the 'Indianapolis Motor Speedway', which consisted of 3 million cobblestones.
• There are only 7 possible opening moves in draughts.
• The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.
• When driven from a tee, a golf ball travels at over 270 km/h.
• Harry Drake fired an arrow 1871.8 metres, from a crossbow, on 30 July 1988
• In August 1985, Thelma Pitt-Turner set a womens record by completing a marathon at Hastings, New Zealand, in 7 hours 58 minutes. She was 82 at the time.
• The first perfect nine innings baseball game (pitcher pitches 27 out, no hits, no runs) was achieved by John Lee Richmond on 12 June 1880.
• The largest crowd for a basketball game was 800,000 people at the Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece on 4 April 1968.
• The odds on dealing 13 cards of one suit are 158,753,389,899 to 1. The odds on dealing the perfect hand (13 cards of one suit) to a particular player is 635,013,559,559 to 1 and the odds on dealing a perfect game (4 players receiving a perfect hand) are 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,599,999 to 1.
• Garry Chapman scored 17 runs off a single delivery (all run with no overthrow) in a game of cricket on 13 October 1990. (he hit the ball into a patch of 10 inch high grass)
• The most expensive commercial boardgame is the Deluxe version of Outrage!, which retails at £3995.
• The world's largest gambling win was US $111,240,463.10 in the Powerball lottery on 7 July 1993
• Grabatology is the collecting of ties.
• The highest paid odds on a horserace are 3,072,887 to 1. For a 5p accumulator bet on 5 horses, an unnamed woman won £153,644.40 (which was paid out by Ladbrokes, the world's largest bookmaker).
• On the 24 April 1993, Charles Servizio completed 46,001 push-ups (press-ups) in 24 hours, at Fontana, California, USA.
• When new, a regulation cricket ball weighs 5.5 ounces.
• Trevor Francis was the first soccer player to be transferred for £1 000 000 ( Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest 1979 )
• The flights on a dart are made from turkey feathers.
• The first major car rally won by a woman was in Rome, 1960. (Pat Moss)
• The minimum number of darts required to finish a single in, double out game of 501 is 9.
• The Roman Emperor Nero killed his wife after she 'scalded' him for going to the races.
• The Australian term for extras in cricket are 'sundries'.
• In the 1950's the hula hoop was banned in Tokyo due to the large number of traffic accidents it caused.
• Max Baer once shouted out in the middle of a world title boxing fight 'Ma, he's killing me!'.
• The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it was used as a weapon in hunting.
• Boules, or Petanque, is France's second most played sport.
• In 1935 Jesse Owens broke 4 world records in 45 minutes.
• On 15th May 1948, the Australian touring team scored a world record total of runs in one day. In just under six hours they made 721 all out against Essex, at Southchurch Park, Southend.
• The most common injury in ten pin bowling is a sore thumb.
• Mick Jaggers favourite game is cricket.
• Round arm bowling in cricket was invented by Christina Wells.
• Baseball star Babe Ruth was born George Herman Ruth. During his sporting career he played in 2503 games and had a lifetime batting average of .342.
• English batsman, Arthur Shrewbury, shot himself believing he was afflicted with an incurable disease.
• Shrove Tuesday is the day the Pancake races are run on.
• The first rugby club was formed in 1843.
• In charades, pushing away means you're cold.
• The Ancient Greek name for a racecourse is the Hippodrome.
• What is black, frozen and measures 3 inches by 1 inches? An ice-hockey puck.
• When kicked in the groin, a soccer player has been 'banjoed'.
• US President, Richard Nixon, tried to offer tactics to an American Football team.
• Johnny Weissmuller, the Hollywood Tarzan won swimming gold medals in the Olympics in 1924.
• Marcellus, is the middle name of Cassius Clay.
• The 1970 World cup football match between El Savador and Honduras was so highly charged that it resulted in the two countries embarking on a 3 day war.
• Karate, often considered Japan's national sport, didn't come to Japan until 1916.
• The nickname of the New Zealand Rugby team is 'The All Blacks',which came about through a newspaper printing error.
• Joe Davis, former world Snooker champion, only had one good eye.
• In Thailand, kite-flying is a major sport with teams of up to twenty people competing against each other.
• John L. Sullivan, a famous bareknuckle boxer, once took 75 rounds to knock out his opponent, Jake Kilrain
• Pistols were first used in the Olympic games shooting events in 1984.
• There are over 10 000 golf courses in the United States.
• Australian meteorologist Nils Lied, while in Antartica, drove a golf ball 2414 metres.
• Cystallite is the material snooker balls are made from.
• At Darts, a score of 26 is called 'bed and breakfast'.
• If you were at the Brickyard you would be playing Motor racing (it’s the nickname for the Indianapolis circuit).
• Ferdie Adoboe set a world record on 28 July 1983 by running 100 yards in 12.8 seconds … backwards.
• The average age of a female Olympic competitor is 20.
• A golf green hole in a minimum of 4 inches.
• The bar used for weightlifting weighs 20 kilograms.
• It is forbidden for an Olympic wrestler to twist his opponents toes.
• The board game Monopoly was originally rejected by Parker Brothers, who claimed it had 52 fundamental errors.
• Formula One Driver, Jackie Stewart, who won three motor racing world championships, also has been the British clay pigeon shooter five times.
• Rugby was discovered by accident. A student during a game of football decided to pick up the ball and run to the opposition goal - thus the formation of rugby.
• Ray Ewry, the American athlete, won three gold medals at the 1900 Olympic Games had been paralysed and confined to a wheelchair as a child.
• The first man to swim the English Channel without a life jacket was Captain Matthew Webb, who died trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls.
• Football was played in the twelfth century, though without any rules.

TATA nano

The people’s car is super-cheap, super-tiny, and super-efficient.

Nestled among the fast and luxurious debuts at the 2008 Geneva auto show is the $2500 Nano show car from India’s Tata Motors.

This so-called people’s car caused quite a stir when it was unveiled in India in January as a car for its domestic market. Although it seats four, the Nano is a paltry 122 inches long—three feet shorter than a Honda Fit and six inches narrower. To maximize space, the wheels are located at the far corners of the car, and the engine is mounted under the rear seat.

Despite its small size, Tata says the car is safe—based on Indian crash-testing results—with crumple zones, anti-intrusion door beams, and seatbelts. But there are no airbags in the first-generation Nano, and some reports say there are only front seatbelts.

Initially, the Nano will be offered to Indian buyers in three trims. The base trim is basic transportation—lacking such luxuries as air conditioning, fog lights, power windows, power steering, and power locks.

The Nano’s powertrain is geared more toward fuel saving than drag racing. The two-cylinder, 600cc engine produces just 33 horsepower but should be frugal enough to manage 50 mpg. Power is routed through a continuously variable automatic to the rear wheels.

Keeping the cost down for buyers in emerging markets was a challenge partly solved with several unique touches. The Nano’s instrument cluster is centrally mounted, for example, so the car can easily be adapted for right- or left-hand-drive countries. The door handles are identical on both sides to further trim costs.

As India industrializes, the Nano is designed to provide affordable transportation for families. Chairman Ratan Tata wanted to produce a vehicle that was safer and more convenient than rickshaws or scooters. Aside from the tiny Nano, Tata sells a variety of vehicles in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and several other countries.

Initially, the small car is for sale in India only, with exports to begin within four years. Tata officials have said they plan to offer a second-generation Nano in Europe in 2012 that meets European safety and emissions standards. There are no plans to sell the entry-level car in North America.

What Roads are Made of

In the year 1900 there were only ten miles of paved road in the United States. Today, there are two million miles of paved roads and streets!

Unlike early drivers, you don’t have to consider whether or not a road exists to your destination. You just get out the map, plot your course and take off. You can make a quick trip downtown, head out to the seashore or up to the mountains. Hit the interstate and you can visit your uncle in Kalamazoo, Michigan, see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, or visit Disney World in Orlando, Florida. You never run out of road!

Did you ever stop to wonder what all those miles of road are made of? Wherever you go in the world, and as far back as 4,000 BC, stone is the common ingredient in roads. Simple stone roads were often rough, uneven, and pitted with ruts and holes that filled up with rain and mud in the winter. It wasn’t until the 1700s that the smooth, even roads we know today became possible. We have three Scottish engineers and their improved road building techniques to thank.

Although he was blind, John Metcalfe was able to design and build firm, three-layer roads. First he placed large stones on the bottom layer, then he took the materials excavated from the roadbed such as smaller rocks and earth and used them for the middle layer, and finally he spread a layer of gravel on top.

A second Scottish gentleman by the name of Thomas Telford designed a way to raise the center of the road so that rainwater would drain down the sides. He also devised a method to analyze how thick the road stones had to be to withstand the weight and volume of the horses and carriages that were common in his day.

The last of the three, John McAdam, mixed the necessary road stones with tar. The tar “glued” all the stone together and created a harder and smoother surface for the carriage wheels to roll on. “Tarmacadam roads” became the standard used everywhere until the 1870s. “Tarmacadam” was a mouthful, so eventually people shortened the word to “tarmac.”

A natural rock known as asphalt had been used to construct buildings for many years. In 1824 large blocks of natural asphalt rock were placed on the wide boulevard in Paris known as the Champs-Élysées. This was the first time this type of rock was used for a road.

In the United States during the 1870s, a Belgian immigrant by the name of Edward de Smedt created a man-made asphalt that was of a higher density and quality than the natural stone. And like the tar that McAdam used, asphalt could harden and smoothe the road. Smedt’s new product was soon put to the test on Fifth Avenue in New York City and on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Today almost all the roads in the U.S. are surfaced with this man-made asphalt. Asphalt comes from the processing of crude oils. Everything that is valuable in crude oil is first removed and put to good use. Then what remains (hydrogen and carbon compounds with minor amounts of nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen) is made into asphalt cement for pavement.

Ribbons of firm, well-drained, smoothly paved roads and highways are ready to take you and your family anywhere you want to go this summer, thanks to the construction methods pioneered by three Scottish engineers and the invention of man-made asphalt.

Tofu

A lot of people have been asking me what food I am craving for these days (that's eversince they found out I was pregnant) and I always say "it's varies quickly". That's because it does, one minute I like pizza and the next I like strawberries dipped in whipped cream... But one thing is constant for the past 4 or 5 days... Tofu! It's my favorite "veg out" food these days. I watch TV and I eat tofu, I watch a DVD and there it is... tofu again! I particularly like it deep fried into a golden brown so it's crispy outside yet still a little white inside and dipped in soy sauce mixed with vinegar, a little sugar, chopped onions and a dash of pepper.