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Oct. 21, 2005 1) The Houston Astros did more than win the National League pennant on Wednesday night. They closed the door on Busch Stadium. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch website, demolition on the stadium, which hosted the baseball and football Cardinals for many years, and the Rams very briefly, will begin on November 7. Unlike now-defunct cookie-cutter brethren like Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Cinergy Field and Veterans Stadium, Busch Stadium will not go down in a spectacular implosion. It will face its doom by wrecking ball, giving the team flexibility in its schedule to destroy the aging structure. The Cardinals will move into a new stadium, being built right beside Busch, next season. With the loss of Busch, only two open-air cookie-cutter stadium will remain—Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego and McAfee Coliseum in Oakland. 2) Another era ended on Thursday, when a Titan IV rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. The launch marked the 368th and final flight of the series, which dates back to the 1950s. Originally designed for use as intercontinental ballistic missiles, Titan vehicles have been called upon for numerous manned and unmanned space missions. Titan boosters were used during Project Gemini in 1965 and 1966, the critical second phase of America’s lunar-landing program in which two-man crews made extended stays in space and practiced spacewalks and rendezvous-and-docking maneuvers with unmanned Agena target vehicles. More powerful Titans lofted the famed Viking spacecraft toward Mars in 1975 and the Cassini probe toward Saturn in 1997. The expense required to fly the Titan has led to its retirement, and the subsequent loss of jobs for the people at Lockheed Martin who worked on the program. With the Titans gone, the United States will rely on another Lockheed Martin vehicle, the Atlas 5 (a descendant of the old Atlas ICBM), and the Boeing Delta 4 (a relative of the long-defunct Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile) for launching unmanned satellites and deep-space probes. 3) Beginning in model year 1986, the Ford Taurus has served as a family hauler, a police interceptor (most famously in the movie “RoboCop”), a taxi, a corporate motor-pool vehicle and a NASCAR racer. And it has done so to the tune of over 7 million units, making it one of the best-selling American cars in history. Now that two new models, the mid-sized Fusion and the full-sized Five Hundred, are on the roads, the Taurus is no longer being offered to the general public. Though remaining 2005 models can still be found at Ford dealerships, the 2006 Taurus is only being sold to rental fleets like Hertz. After the first quarter of 2006, production will cease on the Taurus altogether. In many ways, the Taurus helped put Ford back on the map. To build it and market it required Ford to change how it thought about building cars. It also opened the door for changes in regulations regarding automotive design and safety. And it provided a reliable, cost-effective alternative to pricier models like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Taurus and its upscale cousin, the Mercury Sable, served Ford well during its lifetime, and the nameplate should be retired as a testament to its prolific, if somewhat pedestrian, service. ------------ About the author: Claxton Graham has written a number of articles for Useless Knowledge. He works as a business systems analyst. Email: scifiwriter8502@email.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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