Aw, dang. A very wistful RIP to Raquel Welch, who left an indelible impression on my youth. To follow, a short #DavesCarIDService thread dedicated to her:
Raquel Tejada (her maiden name) regally waving as San Diego County Fair Queen in a 1959 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible.
*she married (and quickly divorced) her high school sweetheart James Welch, but kept the name for the rest of her life.
Pre-film fame, as a trophy queen at Southern California race tracks, congratulating a very luck Bob O'Leary and his victorious Kurtis Offy sprint car.
Behind the wheel of a small block Chevy-powered T-bucket hot rod, circa 1965.
Holy moly. Raquel with a 1960 Chevy Corvette.
1967, with her film career in full swing: with a 1965 Ferrari 275 GTS, and yep, this car she actually owned.
That Ferrari deserves another look.
With a 1968ish Volvo P1800S coupe.
One more; Raquel with a 1968ish Piaggio Vespa Super 150.
Farewell, you goddess, you will be missed.
correction - driver pictured here is Don Cameron, who drove the Bob O'Leary Kurtis-Offy. 1958, Balboa Stadium Speedway San Diego.
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So if I understand this correctly it's my fucking money, except I can't fucking check the fucking account balance, or fucking borrow against, or use as fucking collateral, or fucking leave to my kids, or fucking touch until they say so
Think of it paying 15% of your income for 50 years for a life insurance policy that names the government as the death beneficiary
In honor of May 1, International Commie Day, I say let's seize the means of production from Apple and let Minister of iPhones Lutnick develop a 5 year plan for the Patriotic Peoples National Smartphone Works using the principles of scientific socialism
So if, I'm understanding this correctly, there were 119 million fentanyl junkies waiting around on American street corners for their pushers to deliver 22 million fentanyl pills that they were going to split 5 ways into 119 million deadly doses
Thanks to the quick action of the White House the pills were intercepted, sparing the nation the tragedy and smell of a 100 day corpse count 50% higher than World War II in its entirety
Once again, this is an example of Simpson's Paradox at work. States like CA and NY have overall reading & math scores above MS and LA, but when adjusted for socioeconomic factors - school lunch eligibility, family income, race - Southern states are now outperforming.
Classic example of Simpson's Paradox: in baseball, batter A has a higher batting average than batter B, yet batter B has a higher average than A against both left handed and right handed pitchers.
A happy belated License Plate Day to all who celebrate from #DavesCarIDService! On April 25, 1901 the state of New York became the first to require license plates on automobiles. Oddly, though, it did not *issue* those plates; it merely required registrants to display one prominently on their vehicle, bearing the owner's initials.
Material and construction was up to the registrant - metal, wood, leather, whatever, it didn't say. Cars were still rare enough that the initials were though sufficient to track any car down. But within a few years numbers were added, and other states quickly followed suit. Most of those very early pre-1905 license plates nationwide were of the homemade leather variety.
The first 2 photos are of extremely rare surviving 1901 NY license plates; #3, a 1902-03 NY plate with number and owner initials. In #4, a 1904 Iowa leather plate. Iowa became the first state west of the Mississippi to require license plates that year.
The distinction of the first state to *issue* its own license plates goes to Massachusetts. In 1903 Masshole car registrants receive a uniform state plate, #1 going to Frederick Tudor, descendent of Boston's famed "Ice King" Frederick Tudor, who made his fortune shipping ice from the frozen north to the American South, the Caribbean, even as far as Calcutta.
The 1903 plates themselves were quite spiffy and durable, porcelainized iron plates in Navy blue and white. And worth a pretty penny today. The pair in #1 were issued to Joshua Sears of 12 Arlington St. Boston, and are the lowest number 1903 MA plates known to exist.
Within a few years states adopted the time-honored medium of sheet aluminum, stamped by a hardworking state prison convict working his way to rehabilitation. While the 1903 MA plates are quite valuable, the most expensive American plate on record is #2, a survivor aluminum 1921 Alaska Territory, which fetched $60,000 at auction.
And with that, state license plates were off and running. And to me, some are among the finest examples of graphic design ever. I submit to the jury exhibits A, B, C, and D:
They even got this wrong, the mystery wasn't whether it was a 1940-41 Ford Deluxe woody, it was whether it was a *1941-42* Ford Deluxe woody. It obviously isn't a 1940, and I conclusively determined it was a 1941 per the fender top marker lights. Again, smdh
Just when you though you couldn't hate the media enough