| History according to a Carnut!!!
Special thanks to the History Channel |
||
| Other months of Carnut's History Jan/Feb | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
||
| July 01 | ||
| The Highway Revenue act of 1956 Starting humbly with the first privately funded Highway in 1919, the Lincoln Highway, federally funded highways were in the works of President Franklin D Roosevelt but World War II got in the way. Dwight D Eisenhower had led a military convoy from New York to San Francisco in 1919 and new the importance of a federally funded system of highways interconnected the US. Travels through Europe and most notably the German Autobahn in WWII only strengthened his resolve and when elected President in 1952 he set in motion the Highway revenue Act. The act was not passed through Congress until 1956 with a stagerring $50 billion dollars to be spent over 13 years and 42,500 miles of new interstate highways. The total federal budget was only $70 billion in 1956. To pay for these new roads a gasoline tax was introduced and aprox. $0.18 from each gallon is still collected to pay for the highways. More stuff to thank the German for!!! I have driven on many highways and think we had better use more gas to pay for some badly needed road repairs. Come on people do you duty and buy Hummers to fund the highways!!! |
||
| July19 | ||
| 1934 Retractable Headlights Harold T. Ames filed a patent application for his retractable headlamps. The design would later become one of the defining details on Ames' most triumphant project, the Cord 810. Ames, then the chief executive at Duesenberg, asked Cord designer Gordon Buehrig to make a "baby version" of the Duesenberg car. Buehrig's response, the Cord 810, is widely held to be one of the most influential cars in American automotive history. "Many of the Cord's lines are borrowed form aerodynamics... The Cord suggests the driving power of a fast fighter plane. It is, in fact, a most solemn expression of streamlining." |
1935 Parking Meters Debut The first automatic parking meter in the U.S., the Park-O-Meter invented by Carlton Magee, was installed in Oklahoma City by the Dual Parking Meter Company. Twenty-foot spaces were painted on the pavement, and a parking meter that accepted nickels was planted in the concrete at the head of each space. The city paid for the meters with funds collected from them. Today parking meters are big business. Companies offer digital parking meters, smart parking meters, and, even more remarkably, user-friendly parking meters. The user-friendly parking meters are an attempt to stem the tide of "violent confrontations" between users and their meters. |
|
| July 18 |
||
1948 Maestro's First Class Juan Manuel Fangio, a.k.a. "the Maestro," made his Formula One debut finishing 12th at the Grand Prix de l'ACF in France. Fangio was 37 years old at the start of his first Formula One race, but his late appearance onto the racing scene did not diminish his impact. Born to an Italian immigrant family outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fangio learned to race on the death-trap tracks of Argentina for little reward. Finally, his excellence was recognized by Argentine dictator Juan Peron, who agreed to sponsor Fangio's racing career. Formula One Grand Prix racing began in 1950, and Fangio took second place in the World Driver's Championship driving for Alpha Romeo. The next year he won. He spoke always with the quiet confidence that comes from a specific talent. Said Fangio, "great drivers can do their best times in two or three laps of a circuit, while others take 10, 20, or 30." |
||
| July 17 | ||
| 1964 His Father's Son Donald Campbell, the son of Britain's most prolific land-speed record holder, Sir Malcolm Campbell, drove the Proteus Bluebird to a four-wheel, gasoline-powered land-speed record with two identical runs of 403mph at Lake Eyre, South Australia. Campbell contracted rheumatic fever as a child while accompanying his father to South Africa for the elder Campbell's assault on the 300mph barrier. The fever nearly cost Campbell his life, and reshaped his childhood, confining him to a wheel chair for almost three years. Young Campbell lived in his father's dark shadow, as Sir Malcolm was said by some to be a proponent of tough love, and by others to be a cruel-hearted disciplinarian. |
||
| July 15 | July 16 | |
| 1939 From Indy To Miami Carl Fisher, the founder of both the Indy 500 and Miami Beach, died in Miami at age 65. Born in Greensburg, Indiana, Fisher grew up racing cars and bicycles and aspired to be a successful inventor. He turned out to be a better businessman than an inventor, and left his first imprint on the business world when he partnered with Fred Avery, who held the patent for pressing carbide gas into tanks. Together, they manufactured car headlamps as the Presto-O-Lite Corporation. By 1910, six years after starting the business, Fisher was a multimillionaire. He bought land and built a track in Indianapolis, paving the track with local brick. By offering the largest single day purse in sport, Fisher guaranteed interest in his epic 500-mile race, and in less than five years "Indy" had become one of the premier car races in the world. In 1915, Fisher led the development effort for the Lincoln Highway, the nation's first continuous cross-continental highway from New York to California. Later, in the 1920s, Fisher developed the Dixie Highway, a road that ran from Michigan to Miami. Fisher fell in love with Miami, and in 1910 he bought a house there. It became his project to develop Miami Beach into a city. Fisher gave $50,000 of his own money to complete the longest wooden bridge in the state, stretching between Miami and Miami Beach. At that time Miami Beach was wild, and Fisher set about cleaning up the beach. He built lavish facilities near the water and invited the rich and famous to check out his creation. The Florida land bust of 1926 and the subsequent stock market crash of 1929 left Fisher penniless, and he lived in a small home on Miami Beach until his death. Some guys are just blessed with great vision to make a fortune no matter what they start. Too bad he did not live to see the success of Miami Beach...and the IRL take over the Indy 500... and the Formula One return to America at his hallowed track.....well maybe somethings ignorance is bliss*!!! (*Works for NASCAR...strictly editorial comment) |
1955 Moss' First F1 Win Although Stirling Moss favoured driving British cars, his first Formula One victory came while driving a Mercedes Benz W196 on this day at the British Grand Prix in Aintree. Although he never won a World Driving Championship he finished second to Juan Manual Fangio four years in a row. Having won 16 of 66 Grand Prix starts and more than 190 races in other major events there is no doubt of Moss' skill. Although Moss' Father raced twice at the Indy 500, his parents were not in favour of Moss racing. Moss started racing in 1946 with a Formula 3 Cooper and was also successful at Hillclimbs. "Better to lose honorably in a British car than to win in a foreign one," he was once heard saying. Moss was proud to race British cars and often they were not the strongest cars in the field. In the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, driving an underpowered Lotus, he held off the Ferraris and won the race. Left partially paralysed on his left side from a crash at Goodwood in 1962, he rehabilitated himself well enough to get back in a racecar by May of 1963. The effect of the previous years crash had been devastaing and after a 30 minute test session Moss relized his racing career was over. The Official Stirling Moss Website An online Biography of Stirling Moss |
|
| July 15 | ||
| 1908 : Fisher Body Company is established Albert Fisher and his nephews, Frederic and Charles Fisher, established the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies. Albert Fisher personally supplied $30,000 of the company's total of $50,000 in initial capital. Charles and Frederic had been trained in their father's carriage building shop and supplied the technical know-how required at the company's inception. Fisher Body quickly abandoned carriage building to concentrate on car frames. By 1910, Fisher supplied some car bodies for General Motors (GM), and in 1919 GM purchased controlling interest in the company to shore up a supplier for its car bodies. At that time, Fisher was the largest supplier of car bodies in the world. The Fisher brothers were early advocates of closed-body, steel and wood frames, and they pre-empted their competition by creating more closed-bodied cars than open-bodied. They were also early in their adoption of aluminum and steel frames. Fisher Body completed a total merger in 1924 after their initial contracted agreement to supply bodies to GM had expired. On June 30, 1926, GM traded 667,720 shares of its own stock, at a market value of $136 million, for the remaining 40 percent of Fisher Body. The firm became the Fisher Body Division of GM, and was still headed by the Fisher family. The Fisher family remained in control of the Fisher Body Division until 1944, though brothers Lawrence and Edward were on the board of directors until 1969. The Fisher family's impact on the automotive industry is second only to that of the Ford family. Every GM body between 1919 and 1944 passed the approval of a Fisher man. Talk about the Prodigal sons... |
||
| Jan/Feb | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December | ||
