This truck. Just look at it. Read its name, chew on it: the Ford F-150 RTR Muscle Truck Concept. Look at all its black trim. My God. I think I need chest hair just to steer it.
This Muscle Truck has a 5.0-liter V8 (five-oh!), pushing out 600 horsepower. It has RTR long-travel coilover suspension and 33-inch tires!
Posted in Because I Can, Planes Trains and Automobiles
On this day, October 30, in 1938, Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of “War of the Worlds”—a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth.
Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’ 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.
Posted in On This Day
While visiting the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., a curious guest approached the touch activated Virtual Shark Tank and reached out to touch the glass, repeating the movement over and again. The lack of immediate results left the patron completely unprepared for what came next, when a giant (simulated) shark appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to break the virtual glass of the virtual tank. The unsuspecting guest was so surprised that he fell onto the floor in shock.
See the video over on YouTube.
Posted in Gadgets
Johnny Bohmer has been breaking records in his 2,700 horsepower BADD GT for a while now, first taking it to 250 mph before going up to 275 mph and, then, 283.232 mph, which still stands as the Guinness World Record. On Friday, Bohmer beat that, going 292 mph at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, though coming back down to zero turned out to be the hardest part.
Bohmer’s original plan was to try and top 300 mph, but he lost some boost pressure once he got into 6th gear, so he had to settle for 292. More harrowing was stopping since, as you can see in the video below, his parachute ripped into two pieces as it deployed.
What happened next? A hard brake, which Bohmer told me, put cracks into the rear rotors.
“When I stopped I thought the car was on fire,” he said. The car was not on fire. But the wheels were very, very hot, and Bohmer said he was just happy he was on a long enough track, or things really could have gone south.
While 292 mph is faster than 283.232, Bohmer did not break the Guinness World Record for a street-legal car because the Guinness people weren’t on hand to certify it. He says they’re pretty serious, too, requiring the car to have air-conditioning that can cool to 60 degrees and the ability to drive for 15 minutes prior to the record attempt, in addition to the normal things, like valid license plates, insurance, and so on, all of which the BADD GT complies with.
Posted in Because I Can, Planes Trains and Automobiles
Ferrari just announced the Evo version of its LaFerrari-based FXX-.
Posted in Planes Trains and Automobiles
In 1886, the ticker-tape parade is invented in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticket tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
In 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of ’29 or Black Tuesday, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
In 1960, in Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
In 1969, the first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
In 1998, Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day
A deputy in Isanti County, MN, was responding to a report about a man with a gun at a restaurant in the early hours of last Saturday morning, reports local outlet Isanti County News. He was traveling down a dark road in the squad car with the lights and sirens on at 114 mph when, suddenly, a deer leapt out from the side of the road. There was no time to stop.
Miraculously, the deputy was able to walk away from the incident uninjured, despite both front airbags deploying and the hood going into the windshield. He was also able to keep the car in its lane during the crash.
Below, you can see the deputy’s dashcam footage, as well as some photos of the aftermath.
Posted in Critters
Josh Sundquist, a Paralympian, motivational speaker and author who lost one of his legs to cancer when he was young, is known for his fabulous Halloween costumes that specifically address his missing limb. In the past, Sundquist has dressed up as an IHOP Restaurant sign, a foosball player, a one-legged lampshade, a half-eaten gingerbread man and a really clever flamingo, just to name a few. For 2017, Sunquist brilliantly dressed up as Tigger from the beloved classic children’s series Winnie the Pooh and bounced around on his “tail” in a room full of trampolines at Big Air Buena Park. Sundquist’s wife Ashley dressed up as the eponymous bear and best friend.
Please go read the rest of the story on LaughingSquid.com…
Posted in Because I Can, Humor
Charles Edward Daniels is an American country music, Southern rock, and jazz singer, fiddler, and guitarist.
Charles Daniels (October 28, 1936 – )
Posted in Because I Can, Music, On This Day
Antoine “Fats” Domino, Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017)
“You made me cry / When you said goodbye,” he sang in the opening line of “Ain’t That A Shame,” his 1955 hit that spent 11 weeks at the top of Billboard’s R&B charts, and went to No. 10 on the Hot 100 pop chart. “Ain’t that a shame / My tears fell like rain.”
Although the words were downhearted, the spirit of the song was undeniably up. The implicit message: He may have experienced heartbreak, but he wasn’t about to let that take him down.
Like Chuck Berry, who was born a little more than a year before Fats came into the world on Feb. 26, 1928, Domino was nearly a decade older than Presley and Lewis and several other first-generation rockers. That meant that to many teens of the ’50s, he came across more like a genial uncle than a peer or an object of romantic infatuation.
But “Fats” was among the first acts inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was reportedly only second to Presley in record sales thanks to a titanic string of 11 top 10 hits between 1955 and 1960.
