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Posts Tagged ‘bikes

Your favorite star of yore…

Rides a Bike.

Whoever that star is…  many, many others at Rides a Bike.  (Readers interested in emulation of the most stylish sort, click here for Public Bikes and here for the Public blog.)

As we jingle our bells, we might recall that this is an anniversary with multiple significance for other forms of transportation…

This is the birthday (1743) of John Fitch– who, though little remembered– created serviceable steamboats before Robert Fulton did.

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It was on this date in 1954 that the first atomic submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus, was launched at Groton, Connecticut.

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Then, on this date in 1970 the first wide-body jet went into service, when a Pan American Airways Boeing 747 flew its virgin flight between from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Heathrow Airport in London, England.

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And on this date in 1976, the supersonic Concorde, developed in a joint venture between the French and the English, was put into service; the first two Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously  left London’s Heathrow Airport (for Bahrain) and Orly Airport outside Paris (for Rio de Janeiro via Senegal).

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Stop, Thief!…

A total of 23,748 bikes were reported stolen in London in its 2009-10 fiscal year– up 27.8 per cent from the previous year– though police believe that the true figure could be double that.  Kevin Scott, a 21 year-old designer, has an answer:  a new variety of folding bike…

Read the full story (and see more pix) at Daily Mail.  (Readers who value fine design, but have tastes that are less experimental, might check out the rides at Public Bikes.)

As we search our closets for those pedal-pushers, we might bake a dome-shaped birthday cake for inventor, educator, author, philosopher, engineer and architect R(ichard) Buckminster Fuller; he was born on this date in 1895.  “Bucky” most famously developed the geodesic dome, the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure, and the only practical kind of building that has no limiting dimensions (i.e., beyond which the structural strength must be insufficient); but he was sufficiently prolific to have held over 2000 patents.

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