Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy World Hypertension Day (WHD)!! A day designated and initiated by The World Hypertension League (WHL), which is itself an umbrella to organizations of 85 national hypertension societies and leagues. The day was initiated to increase the awareness of hypertension. Since 2006, the WHL has been dedicating May 17 of every year as WHD.




May 17, 1975: The first full-sized luxury electric car, the Transformer 1, is introduced by Apollo Energy Systems at a press conference in Detroit. Television personality Arthur Godfrey becomes the car’s first driver. The Transformer 1 is a modified 1975 Chevy Chevelle powered with a 180-volt lead cobalt batteries.



Read for some laughs...

The Transformer 1 was gonna take you down to Electric Avenue. Or not

As we all know by rote, the internal combustion engine is facing extinction. The thing is, the USA has been a hotbed of research into battery-powered vehicles since the 1950s, with the grandiosely-named Electric Fuel Propulsion Company of Troy, Michigan, being to the fore since its inception in 1966. That said, while most electric cars of yesteryear looked like upturned wheelie-bins, this enterprising firm took a different approach.

The firm’s first product, the Electrosport, was trumpeted as being the first mass-produced electric car ever made (there are dozens of rivals for the title). It was, in essence, little more than a battery-powered AMC Hornet and, despite considerable press coverage in period, it failed to find favour with a sceptical car-buying public. There was nothing ‘mass’ about its production. The Transformer 1, which replaced it, was launched in 1974 with the accompanying PR bumf talking up a storm about how it was equipped with air-con, power seats and all the usual trinkets expected of a US land yacht.

Powering this behemoth was a bank of cobalt/lead batteries that produced a combined output of 180 volts. Roughly translated, that equated to 32bhp… This set-up was devised in conjunction with Cheshire-based firm Cableform, the top speed being a giddying 70mph with the air-con switched off, and 55mph with it turned on. A 0-30mph time of eight seconds was quoted, which was roughly akin to that of a two-cylinder Fiat 126. A credulity-stretching range of 50 miles of stop-start driving was declared, or 100 miles when cruising.

However, the options list stretched to a device that would put an end to range anxiety: an ‘auxiliary charging system’ in marketing-speak, or a trailer carrying a massive generator to the rest of us. And powering this set-up? A 4.2-litre General Motors in-line six-cylinder unit, complete with a 21-gallon fuel tank. Car and ‘trailer’ together took up plenty of acreage, too: around 8.3 metres (27ft).

Foregoing the small matter of a petrol engine defeating the object of an electric car, what really blunted its chances of success was the asking price: an eye-watering £15,152 for the regular version, or £16,970 for the Deluxe edition with two-tone paint, a padded roof and velour upholstery. The trailer/generator/engine combo came in at a mere £7273. The thing is, because this was an ‘auxiliary charging system’ it didn’t need to meet EPA emission regulations approval.

As to how many Transformer 1s were made, we would posit that it wasn’t many, although one made it to the UK. It was owned by violin maestro Yehudi Menuhin and wore his ‘YM 44’ cherished number (it was also pictured in period with a different reg). Not only that, he routinely drove it around London, with luxury car dealer H.R. Owen being tasked with maintaining it.

The Electric Fuel Propulsion Company, meanwhile, changed its name to Apollo Energy Systems and created a raft of show cars and prototypes. What’s more, its fuel-cell technology was licensed out to The Big Three in Detroit.

Electric Fuel Propulsion Company Transformer 1

May 17, 1975: The "Wild Man of the Green Swamp" is captured by Sheriff’s deputies in Sumter County, Florida after surviving on his own for eight months. He had eaten armadillos, turtles, snakes, and alligators to survive. He is identified as Taiwanese national Hu Tu-Mei, an escaped psychiatric patient from a Tampa hospital.



Some of the many sightings of the Green Swamp Skunk Ape in the mid-1970s may be related to the unfortunate story of Hu Tu Mei, called “The Wild Man of the Green Swamp” by local newspapers and the New York Times.

The story of swamp's "wild man"




UFO Encounters, Volume I 1978

UFO Mysteries, Volume 2, 1978


Art Bell's After Dark Newsletter, March 1995
VIRTUAL REALITY: The drug of the year 2000?





May 17, 1987: USS Stark (FFG-31) was hit by 2 Exocet anti-ship missiles fired by an Iraqi Modified Dassault Falcon 50 Business Jet. 37 sailors were killed and another 21 were wounded. Iraq claimed the pilot mistook the frigate for an Iranian tanker. The crew's valiant damage control efforts saved the ship from sinking.




May 17, 1992: CBS broadcasts a two-episode miniseries, Intruders, partially based on Budd Hopkins’s book of the same name. Directed by Dan Curtis and stars Richard Crenna, Daphne Ashbrook, and Mare Winningham. The character of Dr. Neil Chase is based on John Edward Mack, M.D. (Oct 4, 1929 - Sep 27, 2004) who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr Mack was one of the most renowned proponents of alien abductions.





May 17, 1999: The Berkeley SETI Research Center releases SETI@home, a project to analyze radio signals with the aim of searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Until March 2020, it is run as an internet-based public volunteer computing project that employed the BOINC software platform. It is hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and is one of many activities undertaken as part of the worldwide SETI effort.




May 17, 2006: USS Oriskany (CV-34) was sunk off the coast of Florida to create an artificial reef. Navy engineers estimated that it would take 5 hours for the Oriskany to sink after the charges were detonated, but the carrier slipped beneath the waves after only 35 minutes.




Vietnam combat veteran Michael Reagan recently completed this portrait of Sgt. Nicole Gee who was killed on August 26, 2021 in the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan.