Japanese Pickup + Speed

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(1) HDS Greenway, The New War Horse; Pickup trucks have changed Third World combat. Boston Globe, Apr 5, 2011.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/04/05/the_new_war_horse/

Quote:

"Glance at any newspaper, or switch on the nightly news, and you are likely to see Japanese pickup trucks carrying rebels into, or away from, battle in Libya or the Ivory Coast, often with a large machine gun in the cargo bed")

"The trucks are the modern equivalent of the light cavalry Muslims used in the Middle Ages to defeat crusader knights in their heavy armor on huge, European battle horses.

"In the 1970s, the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Front pioneered the use of attack pickups in Morocco and Mauritania.

Note:
(a) The article said, "Fast Land Rovers with mounted machine guns made their mark in the deserts of Libya and Tunisia in World War II, when British long-range desert patrols would zip behind enemy lines to harass General Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps."

Whatever the British used, it was not
Land Rovers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rovers
(The first Land Rover was designed in 1948 in the United Kingdom (on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales) by Maurice Wilks, chief designer at the British car company Rover on his farm in Newborough, Anglesey. It is said that he was inspired by an American World War II Jeep that he used one summer at his holiday home in Wales)
(b) Sahrawi people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahrawi_people
(usually used in reference to populations from the disputed Western Sahara territory; section 1 Origin of word and transliterations)


(2) Daniel Michaels, Putting on the Brakes: Mankind Nears the End of the Age of Speed; As Space Shuttle Nears Retirement, Flyboys Pause to Reflect on a Slowdown. Wall Street Journal, Apr 7, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704587004576242450234233350.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Note:
(a) Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
(SR for Strategic Reconnaissance; Mach 3+;/ During reconnaissance missions the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats; if a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, standard evasive action was simply to accelerate./ The SR-71 was in service with the U.S. Air Force from 1964 to 1998. Twelve of the 32 aircraft were destroyed in accidents; none were lost to enemy action./ The SR-71 was unofficially named the Blackbird/ Since 1976, it has held the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, a record previously held by the YF-12)

(b) George Stephenson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephenson
(1781-1848; built the first public railway line in the world; His rail gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge; section 5  Stockton and Darlington Railway to transport coal and the first locomotive Locomotion; section 6 Liverpool and Manchester Railway: the first passenger rail and Stephenson's 1829 locomotive Rocket)

(i) colliery (n): "a coal mine and its connected buildings"
www.m-w.com
(ii) Stockton and Darlington Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway
(built between Witton Park and Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington; initially intended to be an ordinary horse-drawn plateway, which were then commonplace in the United Kingdom; Stephenson asked "to resurvey the route and work it, at least partly, by steam")
(iii) Liverpool and Manchester Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railway
(world's first inter-city passenger railway in which all the trains were timetabled and were hauled for most of the distance solely by steam locomotives. The line opened on 15 September 1830 and ran between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester)

(c) celerity (n; Latin celer swift): "rapidity of motion or action"
(d) Chuck Yeager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager
(1923- ; Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m))
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