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Muffler Men
Muffler men (or muffler man) are large moulded fiberglass sculptures that are placed as advertising icons, roadside attractions, or for decorative purposes, predominantly in the United States. Standing approximately tall, the first figure was a Paul Bunyan character designed to hold an axe. Derivatives of that figure were widely used to hold full-sized car mufflers, tires, or other items promoting various roadside businesses. International Fiberglass of Venice, California constructed most Muffler Men. While the fiberglass figures are no longer manufactured, many still exist throughout a number of states across the United States with some also in Canada. At least four remain on U.S. Route 66, including Chicken Boy and Gemini Giant. Muffler Men have made appearances as characters in the comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead" by Bill Griffith, often in conversation with Zippy. Two books have been devoted to the distinctive roadside figures and the July 2012 issue of AAA New Mexico Jou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muffler Man With Hot Dog
A muffler (North American and Australian English) or silencer (British English) is a device for reducing the noise emitted by the exhaust of an internal combustion engine—especially a noise-deadening device forming part of the exhaust system of an automobile. Description Mufflers are installed within the exhaust system of most internal combustion engines. The muffler is engineered as an acoustic device to reduce the loudness of the sound pressure created by the engine by acoustic quieting. The noise of the burning-hot exhaust gas exiting the engine at high speed is abated by a series of passages and chambers lined with roving fiberglass insulation and/or resonating chambers harmonically tuned to cause destructive interference, wherein opposite sound waves cancel each other out. An unavoidable side effect of this noise reduction is the restriction of the exhaust gas flow, which creates back pressure, which can decrease engine efficiency. This is because the engin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automobile Club Of Southern California
The Automobile Club of Southern California is the Southern California affiliate of the American Automobile Association (AAA) federation of motor clubs. The Auto Club was founded on December 13, 1900, in Los Angeles as one of the nation's first motor clubs dedicated to improving roads, proposing traffic laws, and improvement of overall driving conditions. Today, it is the single largest member of the AAA federation, with almost 8 million members in its home territory of Southern California, more than 16 million members across all subsidiaries in 21 states, and an annual budget in excess of $2 billion. History Early years The Auto Club was an early advocate for the construction of the Ridge Route, the first highway through the Tehachapi Mountains and San Gabriel Mountains, which directly linked Los Angeles to Bakersfield and the Central Valley. The completion of the Ridge Route greatly facilitated automobile travel through this significant mountain barrier. Starting around 191 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, vessels used for piracy are pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and (in scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products. In sports, mascots are also used for merchandising. Team mascots are often related to their respective team nicknames. This is especially true when the team's nickname is something that is a living animal and/or can be made to have humanlike characteristics. For more abstract nicknames, the team may opt to have an unrelated character serve as the mascot. For example, the athletic teams of the University of Alabama are nicknamed the Crimson Tide, while their mascot is an elephant named Big Al. Team mascots may take the form of a logo, person, live animal, inanimate object, or a costumed character, and often appear at team matches and other related events, sports mascots are of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with possession of the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with the ball or passing it, while the defense, the team without possession of the ball, aims to stop the offense's advance and to take control of the ball for themselves. The offense must advance at least ten yards in four downs or plays; if they fail, they turn over the football to the defense, but if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs to continue the drive. Points are scored primarily by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent's goalposts for a field goal. The team with the most points at the end of a game wins. American football evolved in the United States, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and Greenland, North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early Middle Ages, early medieval history of Scandinavia, the History of the British Isles, British Isles, France in the Middle Ages, France, Viking Age in Estonia, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Native Americans In North America
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have sizeab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miniature Golf
Miniature golf, also known as minigolf, mini-putt, crazy golf, or putt-putt, is an offshoot of the sport of golf focusing solely on the putting aspect of its parent game. The aim of the game is to score the lowest number of points. It is played on courses consisting of a series of holes (usually a multiple of 9) similar to its parent, but characterized by their short length (usually within 10 yards from tee to cup). The game uses artificial putting surfaces (such as carpet, artificial turf, or concrete), a geometric layout often requiring non-traditional putting lines such as bank shots, and artificial obstacles such as tunnels, tubes, ramps, moving obstacles such as windmills, and walls of concrete, metal, or fiberglass. When miniature golf retains many of these characteristics but without the use of any props or obstacles, it is purely a mini version of its parent game. Nomenclature While the international sports organization World Minigolf Sport Federation (WMF) prefers to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil Corporation was an American petroleum corporation, founded by Harry F. Sinclair on May 1, 1916, the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation combined, amalgamated, the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York corporation, Sinclair Oil reincorporated in Wyoming in 1976. The corporation's logo featured the silhouette of a large green sauropod dinosaur, based on the then-common idea that oil deposits beneath the earth came from the dead bodies of dinosaurs. It was ranked on the list of largest privately owned American corporations. It owned and operated refineries, gas stations, hotels, a ski resort, and a cattle ranch. History Sinclair has long been a fixture on American roads with its dinosaur logo and mascot, a ''Brontosaurus''. 1916–1969 During September 1919, Harry Sinclair restructured Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation, Sinclair Gulf Corporation, and 26 other related entities into Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation. In 1932, this n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquero'' traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of special significance and legend.Malone, J., p. 1. A subtype, called a wrangler, specifically tends the horses used to work cattle. In addition to ranch work, some cowboys work for or participate in rodeos. Cowgirls, first defined as such in the late 19th century, had a less-well documented historical role, but in the modern world work at identical tasks and have obtained considerable respect for their achievements. Cattle handlers in many other parts of the world, particularly South America and Australia, perform work similar to the cowboy. The cowboy has deep historic roots tracing back to Spain and the earliest European settlers of the Americas. Over the centuries, differences ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philips Petroleum
Phillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the North Sea on December 23, 1969, at a position that was later named Ekofisk. On August 30, 2002, Conoco Inc. merged with Phillips Petroleum to form ConocoPhillips, becoming the third largest integrated energy company and second-largest refining company in the United States. The company moved its headquarters to Houston.Christopher J. Castaneda,"Phillips Petroleum Company." ''Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture''.Accessed 04 February 2013. In 2012, ConocoPhillips split into two separate companies. The legacy company kept its name, and spun off the midstream and downstream portions of its business. The new company, which owns the refinery, chemical and pipeline assets formerly held in ConocoPhillips, is named Phillips 66, the bra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humble Oil
Humble Oil and Refining Co. is a defunct American oil company founded in 1911 in Humble, Texas. In 1919, a 50% interest in Humble was acquired by the Standard Oil of New Jersey which acquired the rest of the company in September 1959. The Humble brand was used by Standard Oil of New Jersey until 1973, when the company rebranded nationwide as Exxon and discontinued Humble, along with its other brands Esso and Enco. Today, Humble's assets are owned and operated by ExxonMobil, which formed from the merger of Exxon and Mobil (Standard Oil of New York) in 1999. History The Humble Oil Company was chartered by Walter Fondren Sr., and brothers Ross Sterling and Frank Sterling, in February 1911. They were joined by their sister, Florence M. Sterling, who became assistant, and then later full secretary and treasurer of the company. The three siblings were often referred to as the "Trio." On June 21, 1917, the company was re-organized as ''Humble Oil and Refining Company'' and incorpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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