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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company TRANSPORTATION _____________________________________________________________ The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh's plane, got 10 miles per gallon. In order to maximize fuel economy with then-existent technology, Charles decided to forgo a view and had to take off and land while looking through a periscope that peeped around the engine and a gas tank. There was no front window. For his own fuel he took two canteens full of water and 5 ham sandwiches. He was in competition (for the first solo transatlantic flight) with a certain Richard E Byrd, the famous polar explorer. _____________________________________________________________ In Germany is Volkswagenwerk, the largest car making factory in the world. There are over 43 miles of railroad tracks at the plant. 65,000 people work there. But General Motors employs more people at all of its many factories. They have nearly 1 million workers, more than the population of a good-size city. If you had all the GM workers stretch out their arms and hold hands, the chain of people would stretch from New York to Georgia. It would take 15 hours of non-stop driving to pass all those people. One out of every 200 adults in America works at General Motors. _____________________________________________________________ How many vehicles are there in America? Or more to the point, what would it look like to see all the vehicles at once? At a freeway interchange in Los Angeles a half-million cars and trucks pass daily. This is the highest traffic count in the US. Perhaps you can picture it if you live in LA or have seen such traffic on tv. Well, you would have to stand there and watch for almost six months to see as many cars and trucks as exist in America. _____________________________________________________________ If all the parked cars and trucks in Hong Kong were started up and driven onto the roads, they wouldn't fit. _____________________________________________________________ There is a street in Italy that is less than 1.5 feet wide. _____________________________________________________________ We might not care much about 48 horsepower these days, but a man in Iowa drove 48 horses hitched together. _____________________________________________________________ In 1978 Hans Millikin, a 39-year-old Baptist preacher crawled 1592 miles on his hands and knees. _____________________________________________________________ Sometimes success or failure is irrelevant. Evil Knievel did not succeed in his motorcycle jump across the Snake River Canyon, but made $6 million for trying. _____________________________________________________________ At age 98, Dimitrion Yordanidis of Greece could run a 26-mile marathon (7 hours, 33 minutes) _____________________________________________________________ A police officer stopped a car in Jackson, Mississippi because the driver was weaving drastically. The driver was blind and was being guided by a passenger who was drunk. _____________________________________________________________ A generally overlooked mode of transportation is motorized pogo sticks. One factory in Los Angeles made some that can get 30,000 hops per gallon with their little two stroke engines. This would seem to be very economical commuting. Considering that an experienced sticker could move forward about three feet per hop, these sticks would deliver only about 17 miles per gallon. _____________________________________________________________ Here's another stupid record: A woman in England had to take her drivers' test 41 times before she was awarded a license to drive. It sounds to me like the only time she got to practice was when she was taking her test. That's one way to get driving lessons without paying for them. I'd say the examiner got taken for a ride. _____________________________________________________________ In the late 1800's drivers (of teams of horses) drove as much as 84 hours a week. _____________________________________________________________ The average person walks about 500 miles a year, or over 35,000 miles in a lifetime. Much of this mileage is just padding back and forth across your house or on the job, from your coffee break to your desk, to your coffee break, etc. _____________________________________________________________ There are about 85 million bicyclists in America. _____________________________________________________________ The world's longest bridge is in Louisiana. It is almost 24 miles long. _____________________________________________________________ In 1965, flying Gemini 4 in an orbit 90 miles above the earth, astronaut James McDivitt sighted a UFO. He said it looked like a cylinder with arms sticking out and appeared to be 30 to 50 miles away. Thinking it was probably just a man-made weather observation satellite, he took pictures anyway. As it turns out, the closest satellite was more than 1200 miles away. Unfortunately, his camera was not well equipped for photographing a relatively small object over 30 miles away, and so the pictures came out too fuzzy to identify anything certain. John Glenn was surprised to find a cloud of fine sparkly things following him around in orbit until mission control explained that they were droplets of the urine he had earlier expelled from the craft. _____________________________________________________________ A good thing to carry in your car is a piece of thick plywood about one foot square. Many times, when you have to jack up the car and change a tire, the ground is so soft that the small base of the jack digs itself in. When changing a flat tire on a car, and especially on a motorhome or big truck, after cracking the lug nuts loose, jack up the vehicle just enough to lift the wheel a fraction of an inch off the ground. This way, you won't have to try to lift the replacement wheel onto the axle. Simply roll it into place. _____________________________________________________________ Cars didn't have gas gauges until 1922. _____________________________________________________________ The T-Model Ford was first produced in 1908 and the last in 1927. Altogether, 15 million were made. _____________________________________________________________ In 1910, 6,000 trucks were made in America. In 1925, 15 years later 530,000 were made, an increase of almost 100 to 1. _____________________________________________________________ When car radios were first introduced, laws were passed against them in many states because it was thought they would distract drivers and cause accidents. Recent research indicates radios actually make driving safer, because they keep drivers alert. _____________________________________________________________ Driving with your windows down can cut gas mileage by as much as 5 miles per gallon. _____________________________________________________________ Here's a gas station scam that still happens occasionally: When the service station attendant checks your oil, he pulls out the dipstick and wipes it off as he is supposed to do. Then, he pushes it only part way back into the engine, so that it will indicate that the oil level is low. You, of course, ok the purchase of a quart of oil. This brings extra money to the owner of the station, and perhaps a commission to the attendant. If you are lucky, the attendant only pretends to put more oil in your engine, using an already empty can. Otherwise, too much oil may end up in your engine, causing damage to internal rubber seals and possibly contributing to clogged oil passages. _____________________________________________________________ 8000 times a year, a car battery explodes in America because someone didn't observe safe procedure when jump starting a car. The battery releases hydrogen gas, especially when a heavy load is demanded, such as trying to start the car. The trick is to avoid setting the invisible cloud of hydrogen on fire. Since the electrical system negative side (except on some older cars) is grounded to the whole car, connect a jumper cable to the positive terminals first. Then connect the negative cable, not to the battery terminals, but to a substantial piece of metal on each engine away from the batteries. The spark of closing the circuit will happen away from the hydrogen. Wear safety goggles. The car which has a healthy battery should not be running. The change in load can damage its charging system. Speaking of batteries, here's a hint that can save you cost and trouble if your battery goes dead, and almost all motorists have this problem at one time or another. There are really only two reasons this will happen. Either the battery is shot, or there is something wrong elsewhere in the electrical system. To find out if it is simply a bad battery, and therefore save yourself the cost of professional diagnosis do this: Take the caps off the battery. Most 'sealed' batteries actually have removable caps. Take the center wire off the distributor so the car won't start. Have someone hold the key in the start position for 15 seconds while you look into the top of the battery (while wearing goggles). If you see bubbles forming in only one cell of the battery, that cell is bad and the battery must be replaced. If no bubbles form, or all cells form equal amounts of bubbles, the problem is elsewhere. Check for corrosion on the battery connections. Please remember that battery acid can cause skin and eye irritation and destroy clothing if not kept at a distance. _____________________________________________________________ There are 400 million owners of automobiles in the world, there are twice as many bicycle owners. Fortunately bike owners will never have to worry about dead batteries. _____________________________________________________________ For every car made in the world, there are three bicycles manufactured. _____________________________________________________________ If you get a headache while driving your car, have the exhaust system checked immediately. You may be getting carbon monoxide poisoning. Every year, there are 14,000 fatal accidents in which the driver goes off the road for no known reason. Possibly the drivers fell asleep due to poisoning. _____________________________________________________________ A new technique has been born to reduce noise in luxury automobiles. Actually, instead of actually reducing the noise, it doubles it. A microphone is placed in the engine compartment and a computer chip analyses the noise. Then it makes sound waves that are opposite (phase) what it hears. The reverse waves are played through the car's stereo system, cancelling much of the noise in the car. _____________________________________________________________ The fastest and highest flying airplane ever built is the SR-71 Blackbird. A commercial passenger jet typically cruises at 35,000 feet (about 7 miles) and just over 500 miles per hour. The Blackbird can fly at over 80,000 feet (40 miles altitude, just 10 miles short of outer space) and 2000 miles per hour (mach 3). Even in the very thin air at that altitude, the special titanium skin of the delta wing, twin engine black aircraft heats up to over 500 degrees fahrenheit and requires up to 1/2 hour after landing to cool off enough that ground crews can service it. At 80,000 feet, the sky looks different. In the middle of the day it can range in color from very dark blue to almost black. _____________________________________________________________ The US military at one time had a flying aircraft carrier. It was a huge dirigible called the Macon which had a runway and carried five airplanes. _____________________________________________________________ How did dirigibles get to be called "blimps?" A British Lieutenant was making a routine inspection with all the men turned out. He tweaked one of the gas bags with his fingers and then he voiced his imitation of the noise it made. The men thought it quite amusing and the name stuck. _____________________________________________________________ In 1942, Geoffrey Pyke came up with an alternative idea to aircraft carriers. He proposed making the huge ships out of ice. Built into each ship would be a large refrigeration machine to keep the ship afloat. The plan was given serious attention by the US navy for awhile. They discovered that if wood fibers were cast into the ice in the ratio of 1 part wood to 9 parts ice, the material was stronger than concrete. Soon it was discovered that conventional steel aircraft carriers would be cheaper to make. _____________________________________________________________ There has been an alternative idea proposed for transporting huge amounts of oil across the oceans. Instead of loading the oil into steel tanks in huge ships, it could be poured into huge rubber balloons and towed behind tugboats. _____________________________________________________________ The first sneakers, called Converse All Star, were put into production 74 years ago. They are still being made at a rate of just over 1 million per month. _____________________________________________________________ If you like models, you'll enjoy putting together a kit from the Eastwood Company of Pennsylvania. They make a little replica of a standard V8 automotive engine. If you put it together right, it will start up and run. Only problem, it costs more than the computer this is being written on at $2,195.00. _____________________________________________________________ Take a guess: When were skateboards invented? Skateboards were invented in 1963. _____________________________________________________________ chapter end. ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Please feel free to copy and distribute as long as all files remain intact & unchanged.