Almanac chapter 19: Automobiles and Transportation

                                     Chapter 19

                          MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION ABOUT
                            AUTOMOBILES / TRANSPORTATION

              Ten  percent  of all Americans earn their livings in some way
         associated with the automobile industry.

              There are 127,000,000 cars in America.  Lined  up  bumper  to
         bumper, they would circle the globe 18 times.

              Every  eighteen  days  in 1989, America's automakers produced
         enough new cars and trucks to line up  bumper-to-bumper  from  New
         York to San Francisco.

              General  Motors  produces  7  million  engines per year.  So,
         every year, General Motors alone produces enough engines that  you
         could  line  them  up  end-to-end  from one side of America to the
         other.  Just the brand new vehicles produced  in  America  in  one
         year, after being driven for one year will use as much gasoline as
         would fill up every single house in Chicago.

              While we are talking about cars, 90% of tires on the road are
         underinflated. How are yours?

              The  worlds  longest  limousine is 47 feet and has a built-in
         swimming pool. It rents for $5,000 per day.

              According to calculations made by the Insurance Institute for
         Highway Safety, 550 of the 2485 deaths that happened on roads with
         a 65 mph speed limit would not have happened if  the  speed  limit
         was  still  55  mph.   Deaths  on  these  roads  was  up  34% over
         1982-1986,  when  the  speed  limit  was  55.    Overall   traffic
         fatalities were up only 1.5% on all roads.

              Every  year nine million tons of salt are spread on the roads
         in the northeastern United States for de-icing.

              The toll for a large  industrial  ship  every  time  it  goes
         through the Panama Canal (9 hour voyage) is $44,000.00.

              People  who  live  near  big  airports  have as much as a 19%
         higher death rate. Could it be that the noise  makes  them  crazy?
         There  has  also  been  some  research  indicating  a higher birth
         defects rate near airports.

              Engineers at McDonnell-Douglas are working with a  new  means
         of  making  sure  jumbo jets don't surprise people with structural
         defects.   They  are  embedding  fiber  optic  strands  into   the
         materials  of which airplanes are made. When an airplane is built,
         they will measure the amount of light that these fibers  transmit.
         The  fibers  in  the plane will be re-examined periodically.  If a
         microscopic crack develops, the fibers will transmit less light.

              A newspaper reporter discovered that  41  commercial  airline
         pilots  in  Minnesota  have had their car drivers licenses revoked
         due to drunken driving, yet they are still flying jumbo jets.

              The Volkswagen was originally  called  the  Strength-Through-
         Joy-Wagon.

              If  you  took all the Volkswagen beetles ever made, and lined
         them up bumper-to-bumper, they could reach from New York  City  to
         San  Francisco  and  back,  six times.  All Volkswagens ever built
         have driven a total of from here to the sun (9 billion miles)  and
         used  up  more  gasoline  than  it  would take to fill the biggest
         football stadium.

              A car moving at 60 miles per  hour  covers  88  feet  in  one
         second.

              The  Wright Brothers called their first airplane the "Bird of
         Prey."

              In 1950 seven out of ten of all the cars and  trucks  in  the
         world were in America.

              The guy who founded Buick was a plumber.   He  also  invented
         the  process of coating metal with porcelain which is how millions
         of bathtubs were made.