The War of the Gargantuas is a movie about a pair of kaiju. It was released in 1966.
The SR-71 was a long-range, high-speed reconnaissance plane known as the “Blackbird”, or the “Habu” (a name for a pit viper on Okinawa). The SR-71 was capable of Mach 3+ speeds at 85,000 feet.
The SR-71 still holds world records for being the fastest airbreathing manned aircraft, and for the quickest flight between London and New York at 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56 seconds, records it set some 50 years ago.
A total of 32 SR-71s were built. 12 were lost in accidents. None were lost to enemy action.
The first SR-71 went into service, at Beale AFB just north of Sacramento CA, on 11 January 1966. It was retired by the USAF in 1989, temporarily, and permanently in 1998. It was retired by NASA in 1999.
The last SR-71 flight was on Saturday 09 October 1999, at Edwards AFB during an Air Show, with NASA pilots Rogers Smith and Robert Meyer at the controls.
Edwards AFB is home to a rather large “compass rose,” which is an array, visible from the air (and reportedly, this particular one is visible from space), by which pilots can calibrate their equipment. Or something. It’s painted onto a dry lake bed, which means it’s somewhat permanent - ish. Whenver it rains, which admittedly is rare, the structure must be repainted.
Edwards AFB began as Muroc Army Air Base in the early 1930s. Nearby was a dude ranch, named “The Happy Bottom Riding Club”, then renamed “The Rancho Oro Verde Fly-Inn Dude Ranch”, and featured a restaurant and hotel. The owner, aviation enthusiast Florence “Pancho” Barnes, was a colorful character who hosted Hollywood elites and servicemen alike. After test pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, Barnes gave him a free steak dinner, and extended the courtesy to any pilot who subsequently broke the sound barrier for their first time; Barnes found herself giving free dinners several times a week.
After Muroc was renamed Edwards AFB, friction between the two locales grew, with the base asserting the proximity of the club’s private airstrip to be too close to the base. Servicemen were prohibited from visiting, which was a main source of revenue for Barnes, and following a fire the club was destroyed and never rebuilt. The land was purchased through eminent domain and is now part of Edwards.
Percy Florence Shelley was the son of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and novelist Mary Shelley. Born in Florence, he was the only child of the couple to live beyond infancy.
Unlike his radical parents (Percy Bysshe was expelled from Oxford for his atheism), Percy Florence was a political conservative. Like them, he was devoted to literature, especially drama.
At Boscombe Manor near Bournemouth, he built one of the most beautiful private theatres in England having walls lined with mural paintings. It could easily seat three hundred guests and was a place where he was able to write, produce and perform in his own plays. He was so involved with this project that he was even known to paint the scenery.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” in 1891. In it, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson investigate the murder of a wealthy expatriate Australian man. The short story has been adapted for film, TV and radio at least ten times.
The Boscombe Valley is in a rural part of England, in Herefordshire, near Birmingham and about 115 miles WNW of London. The Boscombe Valley is not large and has only a few farms and estates.
The Hereford cattle breed, known for its red coat and white face, was developed in the mid-18th century in Herefordshire. Hereford cattle, raised primarily for beef, can be found in over 60 countries around the world. Herefords are the second-most popular beef breed in the United States, behind the black angus.
In Clyde Robert Bulla’s book Star of Wild Horse Canyon (published in 1953), Danny thinks he’s going to get another Hereford as a gift from his uncle. He already has three. Instead, he receives a mustang he names Star.
In the 1968 movie “Bullitt” Warner Bros. ordered two identical 1968 Mustangs for filming. They had sequential VIN: 8R02S125558 and 8R02S125559. Car '558 was modified and used for the stunt driving, while '559 was used for McQueen’s close-up driving shots.
Following the release of the movie, car '559 was sold to Warner Bros. employee Robert Ross, and eventually was sold to Robert Keirnan, a car collector. In 1977, Steve McQueen attempted to buy it back, but was refused. Kiernan’s son, Sean, began to restore the vehicle in 2014, and had it authenticated in 2016, with documentation that included McQueen’s letter offering to purchase it. On January 10, 2020, the car was sold by Mecum Auctions for $3.7 million to an unidentified buyer.
Car '558 had been damaged severely during filming and was subsequently sent to a scrapyard. In 2016 Hugo Sanchez purchased a pair of Mustang coupes from the backyard of a house near Los Cabos, Mexico. Realizing one of the two Mustangs was an S-code, Garcia had the car authenticated by Kevin Marti. The authentication revealed this to be the lost Bullitt car.
Did someone call?
In play —
The car chase scene in Bullitt (1968) is a famous one. The scene is widely regarded as one of the best car chases in film history, and it influenced movies like The French Connection (1971) and The Dark Knight (2008).
Anyone familiar with the streets of San Francisco can easily point out the errors in the sequencing of the chase, because the locations do not lead from one to the other. These are called continuity errors.
The chase started and ended in locations near where I used to live, given by these DD coordinates.
△ Bullitt chase start ▲ 37.7483, -122.4079
△ Bullitt chase end ▲ 37.6924, -122.406
The chase scene started and ended near gas stations, but the gas station at the end of the chase on Guadalupe Canyon Parkway is no longer there. The gas station at the start is still there, in the triangular block bordered by Cesar Chavez Street (at that time it was Army Street), Bryant Street, and Precita Avenue.
Lombard Street in San Francisco has a one-block section colorfully referred to as “the crookedest street in the world.” It has eight hairpin turns, designed to reduce the hill’s natural 27 percent grade, which in 1922 was too steep for vehicles of the day. The speed limit is set at 5 MPH, and estimates of 250 vehicles per hour have caused severed delays, often backing traffic for up to a mile. To reduce habitual congestion and delays, future visitors may be required to reserve a time and pay a fee to drive down the crooked street.
Was that directed to my post?
Yes it was.
In play —
Yes, Lombard Street in San Francisco is a crooked street, but there is another just as crooked in San Francisco: Vermont Street, at these DD coordinates:
▲ 37.759, -122.40391
▲ 37.758, -122.40391
Vermont Street is not as pretty or decorated as Lombard Street is, and does not cater to tourists, but it is just as crooked.
The DD coordinates for Lombard Street are these:
▲ 37.802, -122.4196
▲ 37.8022, -122.418
The Lombards of Northern Italy were noted throughout medieval Western Europe as bankers, money-lenders, and pawn-brokers.
London’s Lombard Street (c. 1200) originally was the site of the houses of Lombard (and other Italian) bankers, who dominated the London money market into Elizabethan times.
The famously curvy Lombard Street was damaged during the filming of a San Francisco chase scene in What’s Up, Doc?, a 1972 American screwball comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal.
The Lombard was a smooth bore cannon from Spain in the 14th century. When Christopher Columbus first sighted the New World, it was a Lombard cannon that was fired to alert him and his ships of the sighting.
In the farcical movie Monty Python & the Holy Grail King Arthur encounters French soldiers in a castle they claim belongs to Sir Guy de Loimbard, a reference to the Canadian bandleader, Guy Lombardo, of the big band era.
Guy Smiley is a Sesame Street Muppet character, created for that show, and originally performed by Muppets founder Jim Henson. Guy is a parody of frenetic television game show hosts, and many of his appearances on Sesame Street featured him hosting various game shows.
Guy was largely retired after Henson’s death in 1990, but began making new appearances on Sesame Street starting in 2005, performed by Eric Jacobson.