Memorial for Officer Richard Huerta
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Electric car’s owner disappointed by situation in San Jose
Is the city doing anything about charging station deserts?
Truong Tien Dat dies, former South Vietnamese Senator and
San Jose real estate broker
He traded his last possessions, his watch and fountain pen, to escape communism
HEY! Help a guy out and share something with your fellow PBA members. A picture will do!
COURTESY OF IVAN COMELLI’S WEBSITE, VINTAGE SAN JOSE POLICE
A GREAT SITE TO VISIT…. OFTEN!
Here is a bit of history I bet you didn’t know. Hours after Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service found themselves in a bind.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give his ‘Day of Infamy’ speech to Congress on Monday, and although the trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents weren’t sure how to transport him safely.
At the time, Federal Law prohibited buying any cars that cost more than $750, so they would have to get clearance from Congress to do that, and nobody had time for that.
One of the Secret Service members, however, discovered that the US Treasury had seized the bulletproof car that mobster Al Capone owned when he was sent to jail in 1931.
They cleaned it, made sure it was running perfectly and had it ready for the President the next day. Al Capone’s 1928 Cadillac V-8 “Al Capone” Town Sedan Became the President’s Limo in December 1941.
Mechanics are said to have cleaned and checked each feature of the Caddy well into the night of December 7th to make sure that it would run properly the next day for the commander in Chief.
And run properly it did, It had been painted black and green to look identical to Chicago’s police cars at the time
To top it off, the gangster’s 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan had 3,000 pounds of armor and inch-thick bulletproof windows.
It also had a specially installed siren and flashing lights hidden behind the grille, along with a police scanner radio.
Footnote: The car sold at auction in 2012 for $341,000.
3200 YEARS IN ONE PHOTOGRAPH
~ AT SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK ~
Thankfully, no loggers took it down, nor forest fires or earthquakes!
Just a quiet life in a California forest for all these years … 3,200!
Not every tree has a nickname, but ‘The President’ has earned it.
This giant sequoia stands at 247 feet tall & is estimated to be over 3,200 years old.
Imagine, this tree was already 700 years old during the height of ancient Greece’s civilization and
1200 years old when Jesus lived while Rome was well into its rule of most of the western world and points beyond
The trunk of The President measures 27 feet across, with 2 BILLION needles from base to top.
Because of its unbelievable size, this tree has never been photographed in its entirety, until now.
National Geographic photographers have worked along with scientists to try and create the first
photo that shows The President in all its glory.
They had to climb the tree with pulleys and levers and took thousands of photos.
Of those, they selected 126 and stitched them together to get this incredible portrait of The President.
And here it is:
The man standing near the trunk of the tree is a good indicator of the tree’s size.
Incredible, isn’t it?
A PUBLIC SERVICE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FARSIDER
A PUBLIC HEALTH ANNOUNCEMENT
Don’t you wish!
