Breaking Balloon With Stick at 50 M.P.H. Is New Sport
STEADY nerves and a keen eye are required to accomplish this trick shown at left. This young woman is poking a four-foot stick at a toy balloon while driving her car 50 m.p.h. past the pole on which the balloon is mounted. The stick is pointed at one end with a sharp piece of metal so that when a “strike” is made score can be kept by counting the number of balloons broken.
Read the rest of this entry »
In 1938 New York had roughly seven million people and the FDNY had ONE ambulance. Wow.


New Hospital on Wheels
By John E. Lodge
BRINGS FIRST AID TO MEN WHO FIGHT NEW YORK’S FIRES FIVE-ALARM FIRE! Thirty-five engines and trucks racing through the streets before dawn. Three hundred crack smoke eaters battling a block-square conflagration. That was the scene, a few weeks ago, when 3,000,000 feet of lumber in a big Brooklyn, N.Y., yard turned into billowing clouds of smoke and darting streamers of flame.
For hours, the firemen fought to keep the blaze from spreading. One man was carried out with a broken leg. Another was hurried from the scene with blood streaming from a gashed hand. Still others staggered about with eyes so inflamed they could hardly see. By the time the blaze was under control, twenty-one firemen were on the injured list. In aiding them, New York City’s new $10,000 fire ambulance—an amazingly complete, ninety-mile-an-hour hospital on wheels—played an important part. The big fire was its spectacular initiation into service.
Read the rest of this entry »
Baby Cars for $200 Shipped in “Garages”
World’s tiniest auto is 60-inch coupe with four-cylinder air-cooled motor and does 50 miles on gallon of gasoline; midget cars may be used as tenders for smaller and cheaper airplanes.
COINCIDENT with plans for large scale production and mail order house marketing of a diminutive automobile that can be sold for $200 and garaged in its own weatherproof shipping crate come the predictions of motor enthusiasts that these baby cars may be used as tenders for midget airplanes in the not far away future.
Read the rest of this entry »
New Thrills from Freak Spills of Auto Ball
by ED HARLAN GIBSON
SPILLS! Thrills! Smashups! Constant danger. Daredevil drivers strapped in odd looking, speeding cars, bouncing a huge ball about the race track.
Spills? Sure there’s one! Dust clouds rise as a little car does a crashing “barrel-roll.” Then another, farther up the track, fairly leaps into space as it turns over. The air about the grandstand has the tainted odor of burning rubber from spinning wheels—wheels spinning first back and then forward. Cars skid, slide about, swap ends like a wild bucking broncho.
Read the rest of this entry »
BEWARE The Gasoline DOPE Racket
“FIVE More Miles per Gallon!” “Removes Carbon!” “Stops Oil Pumping!” “More Power with Pep Tablets!”
When you see signs like these, stop, look and beware! Magic fuel elixirs and cure-all compounds that are sold in tablet, powder, pill or capsule form to motorists comprise a wide-spread highway racket. There are hundreds of such preparations on the market that you can buy for a dime or a dollar, but few of them are any good. Some are actually harmful to motors.
Read the rest of this entry »