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August 1, 2011

History of Cricket

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 5:09 pm

It may come as a surprise to those who have not learned the history of cricket, but it is now believed that Cricket really started in Saxon or Norman times as a children?s game played by children living in the area called the Weald of Kent in what is today Kent and Sussex in South East England . It was not taken up as an adult game until the start of the 17th century.

The first documented reference to the game in the history of cricket is to be discovered in the records of a 1598 court case concerning a disagreement over a school’s ownership of a plot of land. A 59-year old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played ‘creckett’ on the site fifty years earlier.

The school was the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and Mr Derrick’s report proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surrey around 1550.

The first mention of it being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church. This was in the same year that a dictionary defined cricket as a boys’ game and this implies that adult participation was a recent development.

With all the recent press coverage of the influence of gambling upon the result of cricket matches, it is surprising that historically, gambling played a very substantial part in the growth of the game in England. Cricket had certainly become a major gambling sport by the end of the 17th century.

There is a newspaper report of a “great match” played in Sussex in 1697 which was 11-a-side and played for the high stakes of 50 guineas a side. 50 guineas would be the equal of GBP5,000 to GBP 6,000 in today?s terms.

The present day arrangement of County teams came about as a result of wealthy gamblers forming their own teams in order to fortify their bets and started to employ local experts from village cricket as the first professionals. It is believed that the first ?County? game took place in 1697 between Sussex and another county.

Cricket was introduced to North America via the British colonies in the 17th century, and in the 18th century it spread to other regions of the British dominated world. It was introduced to the West Indies by colonists and to India by the British East India Company in the first half of the century.

The first colonists took it to Australia soon after 1788 followed by New Zealand and South Africa in the first years of the 19th century.

It might come as a surprise to lots of people that the very first International cricket match took place between the United States and Canada in 1844 (Canada won by 23 runs) and the very first overseas tour was by a party of leading English professionals who toured North America in 1857.

The earliest English tour of Australia was in 1862, with the first Australian tour of England being by a team of Australian Aborigine players in 1868.

In 1877, an England touring team in Australia played two matches against full Australian XIs that are now thought of as the very first Test matches. The following year, the Australians toured England for the first time and were a magnificent success.

No Tests were played on that tour but more soon followed. At The Oval in 1882, there was played what was to become the most well-known match of all time which gave rise to The Ashes.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with the London 2012 Olympics mascot. Click a link if you are interested in the 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

July 23, 2011

The History of Rugby

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 12:49 pm

Today, every schoolboy knows the story of William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School pupil “who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it”. The presentation trophy for the Rugby World Cup is named the Webb Ellis trophy in his memory, and his “achievement” is honoured by a plaque at the school

There is only one problem with this story. It simply is not a fact. It was not until four years after the death of Webb Ellis in 1876 that the story first saw the light of day and its source is thought to come from a local antiquarian and previous Rugbeian Matthew Bloxam.

He was not a contemporary of Webb Ellis and claims that the story was told to him by an anonymous source some 53 years after the incident is alleged to have taken place.

In 1823, when the event is alleged to have occurred, the rules of rugby had yet to be formulated and any alterations, such as the legality of carrying or running with the ball, were frequently agreed on an ad hoc basis a short time before the start of a game.

There were thus no formal rules for football during the time William Webb Ellis was at the school (1816?25). It was not until 1845, some 200 years after football was first played at Rugby School, that three schoolboys published the first written rules of the game.

For many years it had been the boys, and not the masters who had set down the rules which were frequently modified by every new generation of students.

Guy’s Hospital Football Club, formed in London in 1843, by old boys from Rugby School, has strong claims to be the oldest football club in the world. It definitely predates by 14 years the creation of Sheffield FC, believed to be the oldest club playing association football.

In 1871, after a number of contentious disputes with the Football Association, 21 clubs met in London to form an association of those clubs ‘who play the rugby-type game’.

As a result the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was formed. The first International rugby game was played on 27 March 1871 between England and Scotland. The English team wore white shirts adorned with a red rose and the Scots brown shirts with a thistle. (Scotland won the match).

The worries and conflicts regarding amateurism and professionalism had long proved a thorny topic. The representatives of Yorkshire and Lancashire are accredited with bringing in rules concerning amateurism in 1879.

These rules were finally formalized by the RFU in 1886. It is widely believed that the northern clubs were in favour of the professional game whereas these northern bodies were robust proponents of amateurism,

However, conflict arose over the controversy regarding ‘broken time’, the topic of whether players should receive reimbursement for taking time off work to play.

The northern clubs had a large number of working class players who had either to miss matches due to working commitments, or give up their wages in order to play rugby. By 1892, this topic of broken time payments was a problem not merely for northern clubs such as Bradford and Leeds but also for clubs in the south.

It became an anxiety of the RFU: these broken time payments would become a quick path to professionalism.

On 29 August 1895, 20 clubs from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire met at the George Hotel, Huddersfield and decided to resign from the RFU and create the Northern Rugby Football Union, which from 1922 became the Rugby Football League.

The argument about compensation was one which at the time was also upsetting soccer and cricket. Each game had to work out a compromise; rugby’s stance was the most radical. Amateurism was strictly enforced, and anyone accepting payment for playing rugby league was banned.

However, on 26 August 1995 the International Rugby Board declared rugby union an “open” game and thereby removed all restrictions on payments or benefits to those connected with the game.

It did this because of a committee conclusion that to do so was the only manner to end the hypocrisy of sham amateurism and to keep control of rugby union. The wheel had turned full circle.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on lots of subjects, but is at present involved with the London 2012 Olympics mascot. Click a link if you are interested in the 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

July 22, 2011

What Kind Of Cars Are NASCAR Cars?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 11:45 am

Stock car racing was really born out of the desire of owners of customized stock (meaning: ‘off the sales lot’) cars to show off their vehicles, craftsmanship and driving expertise. The need to ’soup up’ these stock cars came from the wish to escape the law enforcement agencies pursuing them when they were running moonshine or said another way, bootlegging.

For the period of Prohibition, a lot of moonshine whiskey was being produced in isolated regions of the Appalachians and in particular the Allegheny Mountains, from where it was transported by private carriers in their own stock cars often to the southern states. Many of these drivers tuned up their cars in order to have more chance of escape.

When Prohibition was revoked in 1933, this bootlegging continued in order to circumvent paying duty, but it gradually died out. However, the fire had already been lit and the drivers of these cars liked to race them in their spare time for pleasure and reward, particularly in the southern states and particularly in North Carolina, where most of the stock car teams are still to be found.

NASCAR was founded by Bill French in 1947 when he crafted the first set of uniform rules and a championship scoring system so that an overall winner of all the season’s races could be worked out.

However, the conditions in the early days were pretty crude. The cars were usually second-hand and worn and the track was just earth and dust. Under these circumstances the cars quickly fell apart, so NASCAR permitted competing cars to be modified or strengthened. Safety aspects for the drivers were also brought in. Nowadays, the NASCAR handbook clearly defines all the alterations that are allowed on contending cars.

These days it is a mistake to call NASCAR cars ’stock cars’; they are anything but stock cars. NASCAR cars are hand made. The frames are different from stock cars in that they are manufactured from tubes for strength; the tin is sheet steel and the engine blocks start as just that – a bare block. What the engineers do with it after that is a closely guarded secret.

The safety of the driver is also taken very earnestly. The driver is shielded from injury by a heavy roll cage. Strong round and square tubes make up the car’s framework, while thinner tubing is employed at the front and back ends to soak up the impact of crashes by crushing slowly. These are called clips and the front clip will also allow the engine to fall away under the car, rather than be forced straight back into the driver.

The bodies of NASCAR cars are not easy to make, often taking ten days to complete. However, NASCAR rules cover the general body shape and they supply thirty templates to make constructing a NASCAR car a little easier.

But it does not stop there. There are different rules and templates for different sorts of races on different tracks, because the cars that race on superspeedways are not the same as those used for short tracks or endurance races.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on many topics, but is currently involved with thinking about the Poconos Raceway in Pennsylvania. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Poconos Vacations.

July 6, 2011

What About Formula One?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:55 pm

Formula One, also called Formula 1 or F1, and officially referred to as the FIA Formula One World is the highest class of single seater auto racing authorized by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

The “formula” in the name refers to a set of regulations with which all participants’ cars must comply. It is almost certainly the most widely watched televised spectator sport in the world after football.

Formula One can be seen live or tape delayed in almost every country and territory around the world and attracts one of the largest global TV audiences. The 2008 season attracted a global audience of 600 million people per race.

It is a massive television event; the cumulative TV audience was calculated to be 54 billion for the 2001 season, broadcast to two hundred countries.

This is a long way indeed from its early beginnings. The very first Formula One World Championship Motor race took place at Silverstone in the United Kingdom in 1950 . In those early days, teams who no longer compete on the modern F1 circuit dominated proceedings with the very first World Championship being won by Italian Giuseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo.

His team mate, the legendary Juan Fangio, won the title almost continuously until 1957 and, in fact, his record of five World Championship wins held until 2003 when Michael Schumacher won his sixth title.

It was during this period that probably the greatest driver never to win the World Championship was competing – the U.K.?s Stirling Moss.

One team that did contend in those early years was Ferrari, or Scuderia Ferrari to give the team its full title, whose prancing horse logo is followed by the red shirted fans or ?tifosi? across the world. In fact, during the last few years the sport has been dominated by Ferrari who until recently has been one of the few teams to assemble the complete car, engine and all.

However the U.K. team of Maclaren, using engines from Mercedes Benz, have proved extremely successful. Another very successful team during the 2010 season proved to be Red Bull racing using engines supplied by Renault.

It is remarkable to note that in the cases of both Maclaren and Red Bull, they have proved much more successful than the teams fielded by their engine suppliers, Mercedes and Renault. This probably goes a long way to sustaining the argument that it is the aerodynamic properties of the car that win races.

After several years in which we have seen the number of teams has stayed quite static or even declined, 2010 saw a renaissance in the number of cars on the grid with new entries from Lotus, Virgin Racing, and Hispania Racing bringing the number of starters to 24.

The agenda of races is also in a constant state of change with Korea joining for the 2010 season and India being added in 2011 as Formula 1 becomes more and more a world- wide spectacle as it moves away from its time-honoured European heartland.

But wherever the teams race and whatever the number of cars on the beginning grid it will continue to set the pulses racing as those 5 red lights go out!

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on lots of subjects, but is now involved with London Olympic dates. Click a link to find out more 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

History Of Tennis

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 9:53 am

The very first known mention of tennis was in the fourteenth Cycle of plays called ‘The Second Shepherds? Play’ from the Wakefield Yorkshire playwright known simply as The Wakefield Master. In scene VIII Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur?s round table is playing tennis with a group of giants.

However, this would have been the medieval kind of tennis known as real tennis which had evolved over three centuries from an earlier ball game played in France around the 12th century.

This involved hitting the ball with the naked hand or later a glove and is thought to have begun with monks playing the game in monastery cloisters, judging by the construction and appearance of some of the early courts.

The game soon proved to be a success among European royals and in England was taken up by Henry V in the early fifteenth century. A hundred years later Henry VIII had the biggest effect as a young monarch, playing the game with enthusiasm at Hampton Court on a court he built in 1530.

The game flourished among the 17th century upper class in France, Spain, Italy, and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but suffered under English Puritanism. By the age of Napoleon, the royal families of Europe were under threat and real tennis was mostly abandoned.

In England, in the 18th century and early 19th century, as real tennis became less popular, three other racquet sports emerged: racquets, squash racquets, and lawn tennis (the contemporary game).

The contemporary sport is tied to two separate inventions.Between 1859 and 1865, in Birmingham, England, Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, and his friend Augurio Perera, a Spanish merchant, united elements of the game of rackets and the Spanish ball game pelota and played it on a croquet green in Edgbaston.

In 1872, both men moved to Leamington Spa and in 1874, in the company of two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, established the world’s first tennis club. In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield made up a similar game for the enjoyment of his guests at a garden party on his manor of Nantclwyd in Llanelidan, Wales.

He founded the game on the older real tennis. At the suggestion of Arthur Balfour, Wingfield named it “lawn tennis, and patented the game in 1874 with an eight-page rule book titled “Sphairistike or Lawn Tennis”, but he failed to be successful in enforcing his patent.

Tennis was first played in the U.S. at the home of Mary Ewing Outerbridge on Staten Island, New York in 1874. In 1881, the desire to play tennis competitively led to the organization of tennis clubs, which led to the four Grand Slams, which are regarded as the most prestigious activities on the tennis circuit.

They are: Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open and they evolved into and have remained the most prestigious events in tennis. Both the name and much of the French vocabulary of tennis are borrowed from real tennis:

Tennis comes from the French tenez, the command form of the verb tenir, to hold: This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning “I am going to serve!” (rather like the cry “Fore!” in golf). ? Racquet comes from raquette, which comes from the Arabic rakhat, denoting the palm of the hand. ? Deuce comes from ‘? deux le jeu’, meaning “to both is the game” (that is, the two players have equal scores). ? Love is widely believed to come from “l’oeuf”, the French word for “egg”, representing the shape of a zero. ? The convention of numbering scores “15″, “30″ and “40″ comes from quinze, trente and quarante, which to French ears makes a euphonious sequence, or from the quarters of a clock (15, 30, 45) with 45 simplified to 40.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with tickets for London Olympics. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

July 3, 2011

The Surprising History of Golf

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:01 pm

A lot of discussion has taken place concerning the history of golf, long traditionally believed to have began in the region surrounding the Firth of Forth in Scotland. A golfing-like game is recorded as taking place on 26 February 1297, in the Netherlands, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball.

However, modern research into the history of golfing has discovered references to a game very comparable to modern day golfing being played in China during the period of the Southern Tang dynasty, at least 500 years before golfing was first mentioned in Scotland.

It has been contended that the game was first exported to Europe and later Scotland by Mongolian travellers in the later Middle Ages.

In Scotland the first recorded documentary evidence for golf was in an act of the Scottish parliament in 1457 which prohibited the playing of ?gowf? and football in case they detract from the necessary military exercise of archery practice. In a subsequent ban of 1491 golfing was described as ‘an unprofitable sport’!. Something which Tiger Woods is probably ignorant of!

There are reports in the accounts of a Scottish lawyer, Sir John Foulis of Ravelston, that he played golf at Musselburgh Links on 2 March 1672, and this has been accepted as proving that The Old Links, Musselburgh, is the oldest golf course in the world. Mary, Queen of Scots is supposed to have played there in 1567.

The Company of Gentlemen Golfers, later renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers set down the oldest existing rules of golfing in 1744. Their “Articles and Laws in Playing at Golf, known as the Leith Rules, after the course at which they played support the club’s claim to be the world?s first golfing club, though an almanac published about a century later is the first record of a rival claim that The Royal Burgess Golf Society had been set up in 1735.

The directions in the Leith Rules formed the basis for all subsequent codes, for instance needing that “Your Tee must be upon the ground” and “You are not to change the Ball which you strike off the Tee”

After King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603 the spread of golf to be a world wide sport commenced. He and his courtiers played golf at Blackheath, London, from which the Royal Blackheath Golf Club traces its origins.

The spread of golf world wide was began by Scottish soldiers, expatriates and emigrants who took the game to British colonies and elsewhere.

The Royal Calcutta Golf Club (1829) and the club at Pau (1856) in south western France are significant reminders of these trips and are the oldest golf clubs outside of the British Isles and the oldest in continental Europe respectively.

Proof of early golf in the United States includes an ad published in the Royal Gazette of New York City in 1779 for golfing discotheques and balls, and the notice of the annual general meeting for a golf club in Savannah printed in the Georgia Gazette in 1796.

However, as in England, it was not until the late 19th century that golfing began to become firmly established. There are a number of competing claims to be the oldest club, but what is not contested is that in 1894 representatives from the Newport Country Club, Saint Andrew’s Golf Club, Yonkers, New York, The Country Club, Chicago Golf Club, and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club met in New York City to form what was to become the United States Golf Association (USGA).

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on lots of subjects, but is currently concerned with the London 2012 Olympics mascot. Click a link if you are interested in the 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

June 3, 2011

How Do Car GPS Navigation Systems Work?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:38 pm

Contemporary auto navigation systems are truly excellent. Have you ever considered acquiring one? People who do not have or have never had a modern auto navigation system, or GPS (Global Positioning System) as it is also known as. will almost certainly not realize quite how much knowledge they provide. It is no longer just an item to stop you from getting lost while you are travelling from A to B.

Far from it. Contemporary GPS systems will tell you if you are passing monuments, sites of historical importance or beauty, churches, hotels, restaurants, taverns, garages, petrol stations, airports and practically anything else that you want it to inform you of. They have moved on from being merely an on screen map to being a tour guide and much more..

If you are thinking of getting a GPS auto navigation system, it is worth learning a bit about how they operate, so that you can better understand what they do, what they are capable of doing and how they do it. This is useful knowledge for when it comes to choosing which system to decide on, because not all GPS systems are the same and some present more features than others.

All car GPS navigation systems use satellites to help them work out their position. (This is not always the case with boats, because some water ways use land-based tracking stations.

The GPS is like a radio receiver, so it picks up signals from overhead satellites and processes that data in order to determine where it is. In order to do this job in the right way, it requires the signals from three satellites.

This is known as triangulation and is very accurate, often to within a metre or a yard. However, in order to make certain of even more accuracy, the data from a fourth satellite is used as a check. There is very little scope for error when four satellites are being employed for pin-pointing a location.

A GPS device will tell you which way to go and if you go off route, it will advise you the best manner for getting back to the right road. However it will also do more than that. Before you begin out on your journey from A to B, you have to type in those two locations.

The GPS will then ask you whether you would like to go by the quickest road, the most scenic road or whether you would like to avoid motorways altogether.

This is a great role, but it can do over that too. If you type in the name of a restaurant along the fashion or a monument you want to see, it will steer you from A to B via your position of interest.

One last item, be sure that the device that you purchase is upgradeable. Some are upgraded automatically, but you have to pay a monthly or annual fee. Others will sell you an upgrade which you have to install yourself. If you are comfortable with making your own upgrades, all well and good, but just be aware that systematically upgrading the software is vital.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with how to get Stapletons tyres. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Car Tyres For Sale.

May 10, 2011

NASCAR, Daytona And Bootlegging

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:01 pm

You will doubtless have heard of NASCAR, but do you know what it means and how much do you know about it? In this short article I will give you a short history of NASCAR.

NASCAR is an acronym for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. Amazingly, it was begun as a family business in 1947 by Bill France Sr. and is still family owned and family managed. It is by far the largest sanctioning business for stock car racing in the United States and the three largest racing series that it approves are: the Sprint Cup, the Nationwide Series and the Camping World Truck Series. In deed, NASCAR sanctions more than 1,500 races at more than a 100 race tracks in thirty-nine states.

For historical causes which we will go into later, NASCAR’s headquarters are in Florida, but its roots are firmly fixed in North Carolina, where it has no fewer than four regional offices. They are at Concord, Conover, Mooresville and Charlotte, where the vast majority of NASCAR teams are still based.

A few other remarkable statistics about NASCAR are that NASCAR is watched more often than any other sport in the United States with the sole exception of professional football and it is televised in over 150 countries world wide. NASCAR also organizes seventeen of the top twenty attended one-day sporting events in the world and its 75,000,000 devotees spend $3,000,000,000 annually on licensed products. This is such an remarkable show of allegiance, that more Fortune 500 businesses sponsor NASCAR than any other motor sport.

Daytona Beach became the headquarters of NASCAR more or less by default, because in the Twenties and Thirties, Daytona was the most successful surface in the world for attaining new world land speed records. Previously beaches in France and Belgium had been used, but perhaps the wind on these Atlantic facing beaches was too erratic.

Anyway, eight successive world land speed records were established in Daytona between 1927 and 1935. Bonneville Salt Flats, Daytona Beach became synonymous with high speed cars and also became a lure for racers and enthusiasts too.

In fact, stock car racing has its roots in the moonshine running of the Prohibition years, when bootleggers ran their moonshine from the Appalachians down south to the customers. The drivers tuned up their cars to avoid the police and became understandably proud of them. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, drivers still ran the moonshine, but this time it was to get out of paying revenue.

By the late Forties, drivers of these souped up cars were organizing races amongst themselves. They were especially popular in the Southern United States, above all in North Carolina. Bill France Sr. was an auto mechanic who moved from Washington DC to Daytona to sidestep the Great Depression in 1935 and the stage was set, the players were in place.

Bill France entered the Daytona races in 1936 but only finished fifth. He took over running the race track in 1938 and began promoting races before the war. It was from there that he launched what was to become the huge family business called NASCAR that has employed most of his family ever since and given enjoyment to many millions of fans worldwide for more than sixty years.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with thinking about the Poconos International Raceway in Pennsylvania. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Poconos Vacations.

May 9, 2011

Hydrogen Fuel Cars – Do They Exist?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:48 pm

There are hydrogen fuel cars on the roads of some cities. However there are two ways in which hydrogen can be utilized to power cars. The first method is to use hydrogen to actually drive the internal combustion engine, in much the same manner as many cars use Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG). The second method is to use the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen in fuel cells as a battery, which makes the car a kind of electric car.

The dream of producing hydrogen in the car while driving along by electrolyzing water is still a long way off, so we are still at the phase of batteries and filling the tank with hydrogen gas. This is the nub of the problem for potential users and manufacturers. There are merely sixteen hydrogen filling stations in Los Angeles and none in 99% of other cities worldwide.

In deed, some of the big name motor manufacturers have pulled out of the race to put the first commercially viable hydrogen powered car on the streets. Ford and GM have announced that they are pulling out in America and so has Renault in France.

However, the Japanese companies are pressing on. In fact, Honda introduced its first hydrogen fuel cell car in 1999. It was called the FCX and they are now ready with introductory models of the second generation hydrogen cars called the FCX Clarity. Guess where they are available for sale? The one city in the world? Yes, Los Angeles, because of its hydrogen stations.

Honda says that, they could go into full-scale production of the FCX Clarity by 2020, if the world is ready for them by then. Hyundai have on-going plans to produce fuel cell (FC) cars and say that they will be in place to launch full-scale production by 2012. Daimler also announced that they would be manufacturing 100,000 FC vehicles in 2012-2013.

Then there are hydrogen powered buses in several European cities including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid. Porto Stockholm and many more. Lotus, the makers of London taxis, have stated that they propose to set up a fleet of new, hydrogen powered taxis in time for the London Olympics in 2012.

Consequently, the hydrogen vehicle and the hydrogen passenger car is out there and the numbers will be growing pretty soon. The buses, talked about above, go back to their depot, where an electrolyzing machine turns water into fuel for them to fill up on and the same will be true for many of London’s taxis. Regrettably, acquiring fuel is not the only problem for the average motorist, a number of of these vehicles, like the FCX Clarity cost approximately $300,000 each.

However, here are a couple of interesting facts for those who like trivia. Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed the first hydrogen powered car in 1807 and Paul Dieges filed a US patent for a conversion to the internal combustion engine in 1970 which enabled a petrol engine to run on hydrogen and 200 years on we are still attempting to get it right.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with how to get Stapletons tyres. If you want to know more, please go to our web site at Car Tyres For Sale.

May 3, 2011

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 3:15 pm

If you are at all interested in either Pennsylvania or American history, you will certainly have heard of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and the historic activities that took place there during the American Civil War. The three day long battle that took place there in July 1863 was cruel and bloody, but was hailed as a victory for the Unionist North.

Even so, one quick look in the Union Army burial ground in the Gettysburg National Cemetery on Cemetery Hill will persuade you that the victory came at a very high cost. The cost in human life and human suffering was gigantic on both sides. Later on in the same year, Abraham Lincoln gave a discourse which was to become famous throughout the world as the Gettysburg Address.

These days, the Gettysburg National Military Park is a peaceful place, but it acts as a poignant reminder of the battle that was fought, the strategies employed, the heroism of the combatants and the willingness of military leaders to sacrifice the common soldier for political objectives.

If you go to the Gettysburg National Military Park, you would do well to begin your trip in the visitors’ centre. There you will be able to pick up books, pamphlets and leaflets to help you orientate yourself when you are on the battlefield, even if you are familiar with how and where the genuine battle was fought.

If you think that it would be too much for you to work things out for yourself or if you do not have much time, you could join one of the regular guided tours. If you are somewhere in between these two positions, you could first watch a film in the Cycloarma Center, where there are also historical items recovered from the battleground on the numerous excavations that have taken place over the nearly 150 years since the battle at Gettysburg took place. If you do not look around the museum before you go on to the battleground, you ought to look later.

If you are going to Gettysburg to enlighten your children about that most important era of American history, you ought to first check out the special interest programmes accessible to 7-12 year olds in the warmer summer months. One programme allows children to enlist in the army of 1863 for an hour in order to get a feel for what it was like for soldiers of the day and what it was like for the children that helped them go into battle.

Another programme consists of a story-teller telling stories of what it was like to be a youngster in the days of the Civil War and the role that kids played both in the war and in civilian life back then.

Gettysburg is a spellbinding place to go to whether your family was embroiled in the battle there or not. Many of the combatants’ names and place names like Devil’s Den and Cemetery Hill will already be familiar to you and a visit to the Gettysburg National Military Park will bring them back to life for you.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on many topics, but is at present involved with thinking about the Poconos International Raceway in Pennsylvania. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Poconos Vacations.

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