12 February 1908 hosted the first Intercontinental auto race in the world. The route of the race new York to Paris took place all through North America, across the ice of the Bering Strait, Chukotka, Siberia and European routes. And all this — at the dawn of the automobile, for decades without a well-functioning security systems, rally experience and proper roads, after all!
Those wishing to participate in the race initially was a lot, but to prepare the car for the trip in time had only six crews, one from USA, Germany and Italy and three from France.
Racing crew Germany
Racing crew USA
While current leading brands, to put it mildly, through my childhood, so the “combat vehicles of the rally,” no one promoted brand now: started out with a lightweight, Sizaire-Naudin, more powerful French De Dion-Bouton, Moto Bloc, and the mass of the Italian Brixia-Zust, the German “barge” Protos and the limo of his time, Thomas from the USA.
The first automobile race around the world was an event of national scale. The movement in new York was blocked, and the times square gathered an army of spectators all wanted to watch and support the athletes and their cars.
The crews at the start of the round the world race
The pilots had armed the national flag and the U.S. flag — the one who first delivered the American flag in Paris, relied serious in those days a reward of $1000.
Heating systems, cool cars back then were not fitted, so drivers were standing in front of a crowd in the most insulated clothes and counted the Luggage. Drive had very little personal belongings and a huge number of spare parts for cars (you do not have authorized services taxied at your leisure).
In America, the crew was caught by surprise rare by local standards, the snow is already on the second day of the rally three of the six cars has sharply lagged behind the colleagues. And in the area of the rivers Mississippi and Missouri, the cars were crawling through the mud was unspeakable. Fortunately, the cowboys and local residents cheered and feasible helped travelers.
The wheels have been punched countless times, and the tires have worn easy on the eyes — the organizers of the race hastily transported spare tire warehouses on the route. In the desert around the Great Salt lake the cars got stuck, so when the car eventually was loaded onto ships and sent to Vladivostok, the riders breathed a sigh of relief and were able for the first time in 4 weeks ways to relax a bit.
Arrived in Russia only three of the crew of six, and on arrival the car had to crawl through the Ussuri taiga on a track to maneuver in the mountain forests of Transbaikalia and to endure a monotonous endless steppes of the Volga region.
In Siberia foreigners with horror. The cards were outdated, the local population did not speak English and the roads simply were not. Hitting a couple of times in the swamp, the crew decided to go along the tracks of the TRANS-Siberian railway to reach the destination for sure. Few modern car take that much suspension of breakdowns on the way.
Such agony pilots learned Emperor Nicholas II and ordered to put to each of the crews for officer for possible assistance. Along the way the pilots were helped by local people, trying to heal the sick from the unusual climate of foreigners and sometimes by constructing the dam to cross the river.
July 18, 1908 the first crew reached Moscow. It was a beaten road German Protos. The Americans were followed, simultaneously repairing transmission and other automobile parts. The road from Moscow to St.-Petersburg already took so much force — if only because the pavement was qualitative, and on the way met workshops. In St. Petersburg the leading German crew made personally by the head of the Russian Empire, but the Americans de-facto was the handicap at home they were leading by a large margin, and in Russia were overtaken by competitors from Germany at a rapid pace. The Italians were far behind due to the fact that in Omsk became a cause of accident fatal to local resident.
The winners of the race were the Americans — they reached Paris on 30 July, 4 days later German counterparts, but the US was ahead of all the crews for 30 days and after waited for the start joint in Vladivostok. Machines from USA, Italy and Germany in the early twentieth century successfully overcame 21470 miles away, and therefore, the purpose of the run was reached, the vehicles have proved that they will be the only possible transport, which will change horse teams.
February 12, 1947 on the Ground in Primorsky Krai struck stateny iron meteorite. Collapsed the Russian inhabitants of the heavenly body, by the way, is among the ten largest meteorites of the world. A huge boulder crumbled into a thousand fragments, turned into a meteor rain and slashed the Ussuri taiga in the mountains of Sikhote-Alin.
In the houses of surrounding villages and villages destroyed glass, ceiling plaster fell down and the doors flew open. Blow was such force that the locals at first it was decided that the Americans dropped on Russia the bomb after Hiroshima. By a lucky chance nobody has suffered.
Sikhote-Alin meteorite in figure P. Medvedev
The meteorite sped to earth with a bright bolide, but on his way he formed the trail and did not descend from the sky for several hours. The debris fell within a radius of 400 km in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky regions. The researchers found 24 crater with a diameter of 9 to 26 meters and 98 craters with a diameter of 50 centimeters to 9 meters. Scientists have collected 27 tons of splinters guest from space (although a lot of parts of the meteorite were snapped up by local hunters “alien hardware”) and studied them in detail, and the adjacent village since then has borne the name “Meteor”.
Sikhote-Alin meteorite closeup
By the way, the Sikhote-Alin meteorite was the first of its kind meteorite, which managed to capture in the illustration. Not on the picture, right — artist P. Medvedev initially was going to paint the winter landscape, but then from the sky came a much more interesting character for the film.
Happened in the history of Russia and more aggressive stolknovenie celestial bodies with the soil. The most dramatic is considered Tugnuisky the meteorite, which fell in the Krasnoyarsk territory on 30 June 1908. It was more a cometary nucleus, composed of ice and cosmic dust, and explode with power on the order of 40-50 megatons — as the record of a powerful hydrogen bomb.
12 February 2001, hackers broke into the website of the Russian mission control Center. The attackers gained access to the web resource not even from the terrorist beliefs, and… to write ridiculous phrase “Windows Rulezzzz”.
Would-be burglars didn’t touch on proprietary information and databases, and, apparently, tried to become famous movie stars like that in the sci-Fi Thriller control the government.
However, not all the hacks of government systems in the world were as harmless. In the U.S., for example, the widely famous hacker named Kevin Mitnick — spirited guy started with counterfeiting of transport tickets, and after meeting with computers at the age of 16 broke into the network of the Pentagon and air defense of the state of Colorado (1980-1982 year). And after five years imprisonment for breaking and release Mitnick erased from the state register of data about his jail time and took all the money from the account of the judge who issued his sentence.
Kevin Mitnick is the hacker who became anticamera
In the end Mitnick settled down and became a “hacker catcher” with his company to develop security solutions.