I just discovered that "Li'l John" Buttera, legendary street rod and funny car master builder died on March 2nd due to complications from brain cancer at age 68. His death came just four days after that of his fellow hotrod builder Boyd Coddington.
John Buttera was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1939 and began building dragsters there as a kid. A chance 
meeting with another racing legend, Mickey Thompson, led to his moving to Southern California in the late 1960s, where he worked on, among other things, Thompson's World Land Speed Record streamliner.
The trend setting Buttera went on to build and design almost every type of racing vehicle in the motor world, from street rods to dragsters, funny cars and Pro Stock machines, even customized motorcycles. After he opened his own chassis shop in Cerritos, Buttera’s skills led to working with many of the greats in those halcyon days of drag racing in the 
1960s and 70s, including Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen, Shirley Muldowney and Don Schumacher. His Funny Cars were lightening fast pieces of art, with their sleekly elegant and simple lines, suspended low in a beautifully wicked stance. And they also won championships.
Buttera’s stellar reputation as a builder of street rods began in about 1974 when he redesigned a 1926 Tall T Ford, it would be the first in a long series of influential cars. His subtle craftsmanship and superior engineering skills were unmatched. Buttera’s rods like his white ’29 roadster, John Corno’s ’32 roadster 
(that won the 1980 Oakland America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award), and his ’33 Willy’s model 77, were in a class by themselves, constantly thrilling hot rod enthusiasts. He is credited as being the first to carve customized parts for street rods, race cars and motorcycles from solid chunks of billet aluminum.
collapse of the demagogic and Constitutionally reckless Joseph McCarthy. Often referred to as television's "finest hour”, Murrow takes apart McCarthy’s campaign, showing it to be nothing more than unsubstantiated accusations and persecution towards anyone with a different point of view. By mainly playing recordings of McCarthy himself bullying witnesses and making cockeyed speeches, See It Now showed what they felt was the most dangerous risk to democracy-- not suspected Communists working in the government, but McCarthy’s actions themselves. The broadcast received tens of thousands of letters, telegrams and phone calls running 15 to 1 in favor of Murrow. 
persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. 
designs soon captured the imagination and spirit of Southern Californian car-culture fans. Presently Coddington’s shop in La Habra, California has some 70 employees working in a 50,000 square foot facility which includes an in-house body and paint shop.
In 2009 the cent, (most people refer to the one cent coin as a penny, but the U.S. Mint's official name is ‘cent’), will get a one-year, four-coin commemorative program marking the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, and the 100th anniversary of the first minting of the Lincoln penny. The redesign was passed as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which also authorizes the production of collectible, numismatic versions of the cent coins containing the same copper content as the original pennies minted in 1909. The standard circulation penny issued will have a copper-plated zinc composition. The redesign of the reverse side, the former Lincoln Memorial 'tails' side, in 2009 will show four difference scenes from Abraham Lincoln's life: his birth and childhood in Kentucky, his formative years in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois, and finally his Presidency. Though not confirmed by the US Mint, there are likely to be at least 12 different versions of the 2009 Lincoln Cent: a circulation version of each of the four designs but with a "P" mint mark, a circulation version of all four designs but with the "D" mint mark, and of course the collector's version, likely proof sets, of all four designs. In 2010, the cent will be completely redesigned again, with a new permanent design being released into circulation, but still with Lincoln’s image. So start hording those old Lincoln Memorial cents, before you know it, they’ll be worth a fortune ... thousands of pennies will be worth tens of dollars!!!