CB tail code T-1A, T-6A, T-37B, T-38C…14 FTW, Columbus AFB, Ms -- “Blaze”, AETC

DM tail code F-4, A-7D, A/OA-10A, EC-130E/H…355 Wing, Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, ACC

FF tail code F-4D, F-15C/D, F-22A, C-21A, T-38C, UH-1N…1 FW (ACC) JB, 192 FW (ANG) Langley-Eustis, Va

----Used to watch the Warthogs take off and land at Davis-Monthan when visiting my aunt. She lived completely on the other side of Tucson up in the hills. You might ask how I could see them. Well,,, my uncle inherited a set of Japanese battleship binoculars when his brother died and I ended up with them thru attrition (sad). I could practically see the expression on the pilots faces. Today, I have them in my office facing Canada 2200 feet across the Saint Clair river, and I can see the freighter captains picking their noses as they go by. I feel blessed to have them and have never see a set anything like them!.....Bill S

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Black was the best-selling car color in 2018, according to used-car retailer CarMax, accounting for 22.3% of cars sold. White is next at 19.3%, followed by gray (17.6%), and silver (14.6%).

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An example of market dominance was the Ford Model T. In 1916, 55% of all the cars in the world were Model T Fords.

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The automobile industry employs 9.9 million Americans, or about 5.1% of private-sector employment, according to the Auto Alliance. Michigan and Ohio employ the most workers in the auto industry.

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First speeding ticket: On Jan. 28, 1896, Walter Arnold was arrested for driving four times the speed limit in the countryside of Kent in England. Arnold was ticketed for driving at the hair-raising speed of 8 miles an hour and had to pay a fine of 1 shilling, plus other costs. The London resident was nabbed by a police officer on a bicycle.

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A modern Formula 1 car can drive upside down in a tunnel at 120 miles per hour. F1 cars, whose average top speed is 233 miles per hour, produce around 3.5 gravitational forces when cornering. That means they have enough aerodynamic downforce to drive upside down in a tunnel.

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A car crash typically occurs within an average of three seconds after a driver is distracted. Up to 80% of all automobile crashes involve some form of driver distraction.

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About 65% of the world's motorists drive on the right side of the road.

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The odds of dying in a car accident are 1-5,000. Those odds are a lot worse than perishing in a plane crash, which are 1-11 million.

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Mechanical engineer Ralph Teetor, who lost his eyesight at age 5, invented cruise control in 1948, inspired to do so by his lawyer. Teetor designed a device that used magnets and springs to control the speed of an automobile.

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Long Island resident Irvin Gordon bought a Volvo P1800S in 1966 and didn't stop driving it. The school teacher, who died in 2018 at age 77, paid $4,150 for the car and put more than 3 million miles on it, a Guinness World Record. Over the years, Gordon rebuilt the engine twice, got 857 oil changes, 30 drive belts, and 120 bottles of transmission fluid. Gordon's Facebook page put the vehicle’s mileage at 3,250,257, in May 2018.

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In 1885, German inventor and engineer Karl Benz, who co-founded Mercedes-Benz, built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which was powered by an internal combustion engine and is considered to be the world’s first production car. Benz’s company built its first four-wheel automobile in 1893 and developed the first of a series of racing cars six years later.

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In Denmark, where new car purchases come with a 150% tax hit, it is a requirement that a driver checks underneath his or her vehicle to make sure that there is no body—dead or alive— underneath.

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Here’s an option that not even gadget genius Q from the James Bond movies could have dreamed up: BMW in South Africa offered a flamethrower option called the Blaster to prevent carjackings, which had soared in South Africa in the 1990s. The flamethrower was a liquified petroleum gas installed along the sides of the vehicle under its doors. If the driver felt threatened, he or she could flip a switch to shoot flames from the vehicle at the intruder. Because of the steep price of the Blaster, relatively few drivers opted for it.

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The Swedish word for ouch! is “aj!” A Swedish man probably said that and other, more colorful expletives after he was fined $1.15 million for speeding while driving his Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG at 186 miles an hour in Switzerland, twice the legal limit, in 2010. In Switzerland, speeding fines are tied proportionately to one's income.

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In 1938, the Mercedes-Benz W125 reached a top speed of 268.8 miles per hour, a record for the fastest land-speed vehicle on a public road that stood for 80 years until it was broken by the Koenigsegg Agera RS in 2018. The W125 had been modified and was driven by Rudolf Caracciola, the 1935, 1937, and 1938 European Drivers' Champion. The vehicle is now housed at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

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The first built car, known as the De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux Dos-a-Dos Steam Runabout, was constructed in 1884 and sold at an auction in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for $4.62 million in 2011.

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Car logos are among the most distinct emblems in commerce, and Audi’s rings are among the most famous. The four overlapping rings of Audi represent the four manufacturers of Auto Union: Audi, Horch, DKW, and Wanderer.

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Elon Musk’s Tesla is popularizing the electric car today, but electric cars are hardly new. In fact, electric as well as steam-powered vehicles were more popular than gas-powered cars at the start of the 20th century. In 1900, 38% of all cars were electric. Electric cars were quiet and didn’t spew smelly gas pollutants. Thomas Edison believed electric cars were the future of transportation and tried to develop a better car battery, while Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the eponymous sports car, built the world's first hybrid electric car in 1901.

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From 1909 to 1927, Ford built more than 15 million cars. At first it took 12 hours to assemble a Model T, but more efficient assembly line technology sped up the process, cutting the time to eight minutes for each car in 1913. By 1927, during the last years of the production of the Model T, the factory could produce a completely assembled car in 24 seconds. The Model T cost around $850 in 1908, but because of production efficiencies, the price was lowered to $260 in 1925.

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The 2011 Ford Crown Victoria was the last car to offer a cassette player as an option. Ford also shut down production of the Crown Victoria itself that year.

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Research from the Federal Highway Administration found that there are about 280 million tires discarded each year by American motorists, nearly one tire for every person in the country. Around 30 million of these tires are retreaded or reused. It has been estimated that there may be up to 3 billion tires contained in numerous stockpiles.

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Only about 18% of Americans can drive a stick shift, and just 5% of the cars sold in the United States have manual transmissions, creating a disincentive to learn how to drive a stick. Another factor is traffic congestion, which discourages drivers from buying cars with a manual transmission. People used to get cars with stick shifts because upfront costs were lower, they were better on gas, they were more durable, and they engaged the driver more. Today, manual transmissions can be found mostly in sports cars.

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Until 1973, the auto industry used sperm whale oil as an ingredient in automatic transmission fluid. Automakers like General Motors continued to use it until 1973, when Congress passed the Endangered Species Act forbidding the use of sperm whale oil. Until the act was passed, thousands of sperm whales were killed every year to get nearly 29 million pounds of the whale oil used in automatic transmission fluid.

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The world’s first electric traffic signal was installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland in 1914. The first center-painted dividing line appeared in Michigan in 1911, and the first sign prohibiting left turns debuted in Buffalo, New York, in 1916.

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In 1950, 36-year-old engineer Eiji Toyoda was sent by the U.S. Army, which was still occupying Japan, to learn about mass production from Ford at the sprawling Ford Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The Army needed Toyoda’s family-owned car company, Toyota, to build trucks for U.S. troops fighting in Korea, and Toyoda was looking for ways to help his family’s struggling company survive. He helped develop a production process in Japan that over the next 20 years created the modern Toyota colossus.

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Norway is among the more environmentally conscious nations in the world, and that is reflected in that country’s choice of transportation. Half of all new cars sold in Norway are electric or hybrid.

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The Toyota Corolla is the world’s best-selling car. It’s sold in over 150 countries and regions and is sold once every 15 seconds. The car debuted in 1966 and arrived in the United States in 1968. The Corolla is now in its 12th generation.

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Honda Accords and Civics are usually the most stolen cars in the United States. The 1994 Honda Accord is the most stolen car in the history of the United States.

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The Ferrari logo is among the most well known of automakers’ emblems. The horse silhouette on a yellow background was painted on Ferrari vehicles to honor Italian fighter pilot and World War I hero Count Francesco Barraca, who painted a similar horse on his plane.