1908 New York To Paris Race

The 1908 New York to Paris Race was an automobile competition consisting of drivers attempting to travel from New York to Paris. This was a considerable challenge given the state of automobile technology and road infrastructure at the time. Only three of six contestants completed the course. The winner was the United States team, driving a 1907 Thomas Flyer.

In 1907 the Peking to Paris automobile race had inspired an even bolder test of these new machines. The following year the course would be from New York City, USA, to Paris, France with a 150-mile (240 km) ship passage from Nome across the Bering Strait to East Cape, Siberia. This at a time when "the motor car is the most fragile and capricious thing on earth."

Read more about 1908 New York To Paris Race:  The Race, The Great Race 2008, Movies

Famous quotes containing the words york, paris and/or race:

    New York loves itself in an unkind and fanatical way.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk
    For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
    In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
    And what’s the good of women for all that they can say
    Is fol de rol de rolly O.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Young women ... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?
    Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)