A roarsome king of cars
QUESTION What became of the famous U.S. car salesman Cal Worthington?
Calvin ‘Cal’ Coolidge Worthington was a World War ii U.S. army air Corps
veteran who became a successful car dealer with a cult following thanks to his extraordinary Tv adverts.
He established the Worthington Dealership Group in los angeles. at its height, he had 29 dealerships around the american South-West and West, from southern California to alaska.
Chick lambert, a salesman for Brand Motors Ford City, began using his German shepherd, ‘ my dog, Storm’, as an advertising prop.
Cal responded with commercials that began with the announcement: ‘Here’s Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!’
However, Spot wasn’t a dog, but another animal, be it a tiger, elephant, iguana, horse, alligator, bear, chimpanzee or even a boa constrictor.
On one occasion, Spot was a hippopotamus, which Worthington rode into the commercial. On another, Spot was an aircraft, with Cal wing-walking.
The ads were hugely successful and by the late 1980s the Worthington Dealership was turning over $300 million-plus a year.
Cal never wanted to be a car salesman. He was born in 1920 in Bly, Oklahoma, which is now a ghost town. He was the seventh of nine children and grew up in poverty during the Great Depression.
at the onset of World War ii, Cal enlisted in the army air Corps. He was dispatched to Europe to pilot a B-17 Flying Fortress. B-17 crews were lucky if they survived three missions, but Cal undertook 29 bombing missions over Germany.
He was awarded five air Medals and was given the Distinguished Flying Cross by General Jimmy Doolittle.
To his great regret, he could not become a commercial pilot because he did not have a college degree. So he turned his talents to car sales.
Cal married and divorced four times and had six children. He died on September 8, 2013, at the age of 92 at his ranch in California.
Kenny Webber, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
QUESTION What is the difference in effect between artillery and shells?
ROCkETS are self-propelled, while shells are launched by an external propellant.
Gunpowder was developed in 9thcentury China and known in England by the 13th century. it was the first propellant to burn fast enough to produce a pushing effect, unlike high explosives, which have a shattering effect.
The first artillery cannons used a tube blocked at one end with a ball projectile. Gunpowder was ignited through the touch hole. The first cannon balls were solid but a hollow ball full of explosive, the first shell (casing), soon followed.
a shell is accelerated down the barrel but once it exits, its path is ballistic, like a ball leaving someone’s hand. it makes an arc called a parabolic path.
The range of a cannon projectile depends on the quantity of the propellant, the mass of the shell, the length of the gun barrel and the angle of elevation it is fired at. Maximum range would be at 45 degrees of elevation.
Rockets can be fired from tubes like fireworks. Unlike shells, they carry the propellant with them, ejecting hot gases in the opposite direction to the rocket, according to isaac newton’s Third law of Motion: ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Unlike shells, rockets continue to accelerate until the propellant runs out. after this the motion is ballistic.
Rockets can have a much greater range than shells. Wernher von Braun devised the v-2, the first modern military rocket with a range of 200 miles. He later worked for nasa on the apollo project.
Today, an intercontinental ballistic missile fired into space and travelling in a suborbital elliptical path round the Earth might cover more than 3,000 miles.
The British army aS-90 self-propelled gun, fitted with a 52-calibre gun barrel, can fire a shell 15 miles. Rockets have many advantages, but shells are cheaper.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants.
QUESTION Did Neil Armstrong write letters to Moon-landing sceptics?
NEIL ARMSTRONG, the first man to walk on the Moon, often received post from conspiracy theorists, but rarely responded. However, he felt compelled to do so when he received a letter from James Whitman, a social studies teacher at Sidney High School in Ohio, 20 miles from the armstrong air & Space Museum.
Whitman claimed that following extensive research he was questioning the validity of the Moon landings and was uncertain what to tell his students. He suggested armstrong was shying away from publicity because he was ashamed of his role in the hoax.
Whitman referred to the conspiracy whereby the ‘crew was in low-Earth orbit while faking a video of being halfway to the Moon . . . by simply placing a
cardboard insert into the round portal window then moving the camera to the rear of the spacecraft’.
armstrong replied: ‘You should contact the astronomers at lick Observatory [in California], who bounced their laser beam off the lunar ranging reflector minutes after i installed it.’
Whitman responded with an email about more conspiracies: ‘ if i had reasonable explanations and some categorical proof, i could quell this tide of suspicion. at present, you, Mr aldrin and Mr Collins seem to be the only sources for proving mankind has walked on the Moon.’ armstrong did not reply to this.
Jan Powers, London SE12.
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