The Pontiac Solstice is a sports car that was in production 2005–2009. It was Pontiac‘s first two-seater since the Fiero was discontinued in 1988.
Fiero is an evil wizard, who is one of the evil antagonists of Season 2 of the Disney Channel animated series Elena of Avalor.
The Pontiac Fiero was produced from 1983 to 1988. It was the first two-seater Pontiac since the 1926 to 1938 coupes, and also the first mass-produced mid-engine sports car by a US manufacturer.
The Pontiac brand was introduced by General Motors in 1926. It was named after the famous Ottawa chief who had also given his name to the city of Pontiac, Michigan where the car was produced. Due to financial problems and restructuring efforts, GM announced in 2008 it would follow the same path with Pontiac as it earlier done with Oldsmobile and discontinued manufacturing and marketing vehicles under the Pontiac brand. Franchise agreements for Pontiac dealers expired October 31, 2010, leaving GM to focus on its four remaining North American brands: Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC.
The Pontiac Fiero was a great little car, until it was discovered that due to a design defect, it tended to overheat and burst into flames. Oops. That led to its short life-span, as fixing the defect was too expensive.
Chief Winnemucca, born a Shoshone, was a leader of the Paiute people. His name means “The Giver of Spiritual Gifts”, and Winnemucca Nevada is named after him.
Ninja’d! Northern Piper’s is still in play:
Pontiac’s War (also known as Pontiac’s Conspiracy or Pontiac’s Rebellion) was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes, primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country who were dissatisfied with British postwar policies in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Warriors from numerous tribes joined the uprising in an effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of the region. The war is named after the Odawa leader Pontiac, the most prominent of many native leaders in the conflict.
Chief Pontiac was killed in the village of Cahokia in 1769. The village shares its name with the Cahokia Mounds some miles north, the site of the largest Native American city north of Mexico. If the highest population estimates of 40,000 inhabitants are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until the 1780s, when Philadelphia’s population grew beyond 40,000. The population of 13th-century Cahokia was equal to or larger than the population of 13th-century London.
British lexicographer and essayist Dr. Samuel Johnson once remarked, “Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
Julie London (1926 - 2000) was a singer and an actress. Her main singing career spanned the 1950s and 1960s, while her acting career spanned from approx. 1944 to 1979 when the Emergency! TV series was cancelled after six seasons in 1977, and after Emergency!'s TV specials in 1979.
She was the only member of the cast to appear in every episode of Emergency!
Julie London’s husband was Bobby Troup, who, although he played Dr. Joe Early opposite her on “Emergency!”, was better known as the jazz composer and musician who wrote “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”.
Route 66, or US 66, has several nicknames including The Mother Road, The Will Rogers Highway, and Main Street of America. Stretching the 2,000 approximate miles from Chicago IL to Santa Monica CA by way of St. Louis MO, Oklahoma City OK, Amarillo TX, Albuquerque NM, and Flagstaff AZ, it was established on 11 Nov 1926. Due largely to the Interstate Highway System created in the 1950s, it was officially removed from the US Highway system in 1985.
The Interstate Highway Systemwas created largely at the instigation of President Dwight Eisenhower, who was influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country in the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. Eisenhower gained an appreciation of the *Reichsautobahn *system, the first “national” implementation of modern Germany’s *Autobahn *network, as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander Of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. He recognized that the proposed system would also provide key ground transport routes for military supplies and troop deployments in case of an emergency or foreign invasion.
The Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 in Colorado spans the Continental Divide in the Rockies. At 11,158 feet above sea level, it is one of the highest vehicular tunnels in the world. In 1979 when the second bore was completed (the first bore, 1973), one of the final major pieces of the entire Interstate Highway System was completed.
The 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, of which Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower took part, was a convoy carried out by the US Army Motor Transport Corps that drove from Washington, D.C., to Oakland, California and then by ferry to end in San Francisco. The convoy encountered mostly unpaved roads from Illinois to Nevada, and had to repair wooden bridges that they broke along the way. The total miles traveled was 3,250 over a course of 56 days. Total travel time was 573.5 hours, for an average of about 5.66 miles per hour.
The 1919 Motor Transport Corp convoy traveled through the Great Salt Lake Desert which is known for the evaporated salt flats that were once Lake Bonneville…the Bonneville Flats was the site of the first land speed record by a jet propelled car when Craig Breedlove piloted the Spirit Of America to a top speed of 407.447 on August 5, 1963.
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route that routed westward 19th century emigrants south of the Great Salt Lake from Fort Bridger, at Black Forks Wyoming (north of what is now Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area) on their travel to California. It was an alternative to the traditional northern route that reached the Snake River that was proposed by Lansford Hastings in his The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California. The ill-fated Donner Party famously took that route, encountered problems in the untested cutoff route, and their subsequent delays led to their winter demise in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 230 ft long and 20 in tall, depicting the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Two scenes in the tapestry are particularly striking, one showing what is probably Halley’s Comet, and another showing the death of King Harold, which appears to have him gripping an arrow that had pierced his eye.
One of the most puzzling aspects of the Donner Party is why so many women survived, and so many men died…28 men out of 48 men perished, but only 8 out of 32 women perished.
To tie #592 and #593…
The Lady and the Unicorn is the modern title given to a series of six** tapestries** woven in Flanders from wool and silk, from designs (“cartoons”) drawn in Paris around 1500. The set is often considered one of the greatest works of art of the Middle Ages in Europe.