Word: oldfield
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...November 1902 Barney Oldfield was a brisk young sport who had made a fair reputation as a bicycle racer and just got a job with Henry Ford. When Ford perfected the automobile named 999, which he thought might become the first in history to go a mile a minute, he set about to select a driver for a five-mile race. Barney Oldfield had never driven a car, only ridden in one twice, but he asked for a chance to drive it. After learning to drive in the morning, he won the race in the afternoon, covered a mile...
Fifty-five, fat, still recognizable by his cigar, Barney Oldfield last week engaged in his first race in 16 years, an absurd "Jinx Derby" to advertise the Chrysler exhibit at Chicago's Century of Progress, where Oldfield heads a staff of 20 exhibition drivers. Oldest car in the race was an 1896 Tallyho made by the Chicago Vehicle Co., which had not been moved for 34 years. Others in the field of 13 were an 1897 Stanley Steamer, a chain-drive International, a 1904 one-cylinder Cadillac, a rope-drive 1902 Holsman, a 1902 Lincoln truck-roadster, a 1907 Staver...
...almost every sport there is someone whose nickname is "Wild Bill." "Wild Bill" Cummings got his from his father who was a racetrack driver from 1907 to 1921. Young Cummings was born within earshot of the Indianapolis Speedway, learned to distinguish Barney Oldfield's car by its sound, promised his mother that some day he would win the 500-mile race. He gathered speed slowly, first as a Western Union messenger boy, later as a taxidriver. When he was 16, he began driving in motorcycle races, graduated to automobiles two years later. He finished fifth in the 500-mile...
...duck (put out with no runs) in the second match, but the crack British bowler, Harold Larwood, had consistently shown a distressing disregard for the safety of opposing batsmen. In the third match he had struck and injured Australia's W. M. Woodfull and W. A. Oldfield. The Australian Board of Cricket Control had addressed a protesting cable to the Marylebone Cricket Club in London, governing body of the game. Said the reply...
...Barney Oldfield, after seeing Blue Bird perform, said he planned to beat Sir Malcolm's record with a 32-cylinder car built like an inverted canoe. Unlike Oldfield, who could not even ride a bicycle until he was 17, Sir Malcolm Campbell learned to drive a car when he should have been in school, learned about motors by tinkering a second-hand motorcycle. When he inherited £250,000 and a seat on Lloyd's (where his life and car are insured for a total of £20,000), he continued to experiment. In 1909 he built an airplane...