16 May 2014

Secret Service ingenuity


Rico's friend Dave forwards this non-perv bit of history:
Hours after Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i was bombed on 7 December 1941, the Secret Service found themselves in a bind. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give his Day of Infamy speech to Congress and, although the trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents weren't sure how to transport him safely. At the time, Federal law prohibited buying any cars that cost more than $750, so they'd have to get clearance from Congress to do it, and nobody had time for that. One of the Secret Service agents, however, discovered that the Treasury Department had seized the bulletproof car that Al Capone had owned when he was sent to jail in 1931. They cleaned it, made sure it was running perfectly and had it ready for the President the next day.
And run properly it did. Capone's car was a sight to behold. It had been painted black and green, so as to look identical to Chicago's police cars at the time. It also had a specially installed siren and flashing lights hidden behind the grille, along with a police scanner radio. To top it off, the gangster's 1928 Cadillac 341A Town Sedan had three thousand pounds of armor and inch-thick bulletproof windows. Mechanics are said to have cleaned and checked each feature of the Caddy well into the night of 7 December, to make sure that it would run properly the next day for the Commander in Chief.
The car was sold at auction in 2012 for $341,000.

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