Ferdinand Magellan Railcar - History

History

The Ferdinand Magellan was built in 1927 by the Pullman Company in Lot 6037, Plan 3972 as a private car. It was one of six similar cars named after famous explorers, Ferdinand Magellan, David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Marco Polo, Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen. After the United States entered World War II, it was suggested by Secret Service agent Mike Reilly and White House Press Secretary Stephen Early that President Franklin D. Roosevelt needed a specially equipped and armored car rather than using standard equipment provided by the Pullman Company. The Ferdinand Magellan was selected, and the Pullman Company rebuilt the car. The Ferdinand Magellan became the first passenger railcar built for a President since the War Department had built a special car for the use of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

Read more about this topic:  Ferdinand Magellan Railcar

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.
    Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)

    History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
    But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)