Powerful Aero Engines

1917

In testing an airplane engine of 200 horse power a Detroit company mounted it upon a heavy motor truck, and the aerial propeller sent the track flying along a boulevard at the rate of more than 40 miles an hour. This was a speed that the truck could not begin to develop under its own motive power, and the method furnished a better practical test of the 12-cylinder airplane engine than was possible in the testing laboratory or in any stationary trial on blocks.

As an additional test the rear wheels of the two-ton truck were locked, so that they could not revolve, and in this condition it was driven across a ball park by the airplane engine and propeller through heavy drifts of snow and over ice. The motor weighs 800 pounds and develops power sufficient to drive a 12-passenger airplane at 40 miles an hour. — Popular Mechanics Magazine.


Won His Lost Watch

An extraordinary watch story is told by a Welsh campaigner home on leave from African battlefields. When he was in German West Africa he lost a wristlet watch. It was not very valuable, so he did not worry a lot about it. But many months later, when on active service in German East Africa, he took a share in a raffle for a watch. He won, and to his amazement found that the prize was his own watch.

Trussed Turkey Smashes Window to Smithereens

New Mexico, 1920

Turkey Smashes Plate Glass Window

On Monday an 8-pound turkey, although its feet were tied, managed to fly out of a truck on Main street and from there flew straight across the street and clear through the plate glass window of Manasse Bros. store. The window was smashed to smithereens but, so far as could be discovered, the turkey failed to sustain the slightest damage.

—The Rio Grande Republic, Las Cruces, New Mexico, October 21, 1920, page 1.