Browsing: Vehicles

A Brief History On September 25, 1911, the French battleship, Liberté, joined the long, sad list of ships that managed to sink themselves without the benefit of an enemy to blame when she blew up while moored at Toulon harbor in the South of France. Digging Deeper Liberté was a pre-Dreadnaught type battleship, built in 1902 to 1908, already obsolete at her 1908 commissioning because of the revolutionary appearance of the British battleship HMS Dreadnaught in 1906.  Still, the Liberté  was an impressive ship with a displacement of nearly 15,000 tons and a length of 439 feet.  Capable of 19…

A Brief History On September 21, 1964, the XB-70 Valkyrie made its maiden flight at Palmdale, California.  The world’s first Mach 3 bomber, the Valkyrie was designed to outrace Soviet interceptors and drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union with impunity.  As it turned out, this concept became obsolete before the Valkyrie could be produced, and therefore it was not produced, saving US taxpayers a ton of money.  On previous September 7th’s we ran articles 10 Underperforming Weapons, 5 More Underperforming Weapons and Another 5 Underperforming Weapons.  On May 15th we featured an article on 10 Weapons and Weapon Systems…

A Brief History On September 20, 1893, Charles Duryea and his brother, J. Frank Duryea, tested their gasoline powered automobile, the first gasoline powered car in the United States.  Since that historic day, Americans have been building and buying cars and other motor vehicles like no other country on Earth.  Here today we list 10 Amazing Facts About American Cars, their history of manufacture, sales, performance and the like. Digging Deeper 1. First Ever Automobile, 1885-1886. Karl Benz of Germany came out with his Benz-Patent-Motorwagen a whopping 7 years before the Duryeas made the first American gasoline powered auto.  Benz used…

A Brief History On September 17, 1939, only a couple weeks after World War II in Europe began, the German U-boat, U-29, sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous with two of the three torpedoes fired striking the unlucky carrier.  Courageous sank with 519 of her crew going down, becoming the first aircraft carrier ever sunk by a submarine.  Here we list all the aircraft carriers ever sunk in combat by submarines, a dangerous prey as carriers are inevitably well protected by escorting ships.  Note that no aircraft carrier has been sunk in combat from any source since the end…

A Brief History On August 23, 1904, Harry Weed of Canastota, New York patented the automobile tire chain.  In those days before snow tires and before Four Wheel and All Wheel Drive, tire chains undoubtedly saved many a would be stranded motorist.  Here we list 10 Nifty Automotive Inventions, some of those great things that might not be of great necessity, but that make our motoring lives easier and even more fun. Digging Deeper 1. Tire Chains, 1904. As stated above, this invention is not only helpful, but in some circumstances an absolute necessity, especially in the mountains.  Tire chains are…