Epic Book About Renovation and History of the VW Beetle From 1941

Volkswagen Beetle is not just an ordinary car, it's an icon. More than 21 million of these cars have been sold since the start of its production in the 1940s until the end of 2003. It has become the most produced car without any significant change in design in the history.

The Czechs can boast with the oldest surviving Beetle. This Beetle is now parked in the garage of the veteran lover Ondrej Brom who was working on the demanding restoration of this gem for several years. Restoration is finally done and everything about the restoration process, history of this specific car and VW history is written in black and white in 350 page book which is now offered via Kickstarter.

The poor thing was beaten up and repaired many times during the socialism in Czechoslovakia when parts were rare but the final result of over 5 years of renovation is simply mind blowing!

Chapter One
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

“I have met with this car for the first time in 1988 when I was still a student,” recalls Ondrej. “I have noticed this car at my brother's friend Ladislav Rojka. The poor thing was parked beneath a giant tree, under the layer of clay halfway through the wheels. It was an ungrateful and sad sight.”

Nine years later, when he found out that the wreck is for sale, he immediately rushed there. He had only four thousand Czech crowns in his wallet.

"The price was 60 thousand Czech crowns. So I asked the owner if he could wait until I get to the bank. Thank God he agreed,” says Ondrej.

Chapter Two
THE HISTORY UNRAVELED BY THE POLICE TECHNICIAN

He had no idea what an unique car he acquired when he purchased the wreck of this Beetle. He knew he was the new owner of the original KdF war type, but further information about his car remained a mystery. There were no production labels to be found, let alone a body number that could reveal more.

In order to find out the history of this Beetle, Ondrej had to literally do the detective work. He searched for a ways he could recover the serial number of the car from the body that was covered by many layers of the paint. He consulted with experts, tried special X-rays, even tried to call the Ministry of the Interior. Eventually, he remembered that he has a friend with the criminal police who worked as a technician.

Layers of pains and asphalt hiding everything from the body number to the original black paint.

“My police technician friend came to my workshop with a number of strange things - variety of test tubes and containers full of liquids, droppers and brushes - I felt like in a small chemical lab. He gradually applied the chemicals to the hood of the car. Me and my wife were watching and examining the location where the serial number should be,” recalls Ondrej.

Eventually, the number 20 revealed under the layers of the paint. After the long dive in the archives it was clear, the first owner of this KdF was the famous Berlin composer Paul Lincke, who lived in Marianske Lazne, Czech republic since 1943. However, all the Sudetenland Germans including him, were relocated after the WWII. But the car remained in Czechoslovakia and was taken by the state health official Zdenek Krasny. Tesar family owned the car after him.

“Unfortunately the fate of Lincke's car between 1958 and 1997 can not be documented well. What I have learned from the memories of Antonin Tesar the younger is that the sale of the car happened sometime in 1958. However, I was not able to find out who bought the vehicle. Everything is under the dust of times and fog of a strange totalitarian times in Czech republic,” says Ondrej about the history of the car.

Paul Carl Emil Lincke, first owner of the car back in 1941.

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10 Most Expensive DC Comic Books Ever Sold. Are You Lucky Enough to Own One of These Rare Comic Books?

Truly rare comic books may come along once or twice in a lifetime. Most collectors only dream of finding one.

These days movies based on comic books have become the highest box-office earners. This new interest in the characters has sparked higher comic book sales and increased the prices of the rare/collectable issues. For example, with no more than 100 copies left in the world, a near-mint copy of Action Comics No.1 (the first comic book to feature Superman) sold for $3.2 million on eBay in 2014.

These are the 10 most valuable comic books. And yes, some of these titles weren’t D.C. comics at the time, but since they are now, or at least the characters within are now, they’re included.

1. ACTION COMICS #1 (1938) - $4,530,000

In June of 1938, National Allied Publications launched Action Comics, the first to feature not just Superman (and Lois Lane and Clark Kent), but also the first to introduce the world to the superhero archetype – an archetype the world was apparently craving. If you look at pop culture today, it’s hard not to see Superman’s impact. That kind of cultural cache doesn’t escape the keen eyes and big wallets of collectors worldwide, nor does the fact that there are supposedly only 50 or so unrestored original copies of the book, out of the roughly 200,000 that were first printed.

In August of 2014, no less than 48 bidders took to eBay to try and commandeer a pristine copy of the issue. After some intense bidding, the comic sold for a whopping $3,207,852, which is exactly $3,207,851.90 more than the 10-cent cover price. It’s a record that still stands today, having broken the previous mark set in 2011 when a less pristine copy of Action Comics #1 (which was once stolen from Nicolas Cage) sold for $2,161,000. But judging from Nostomania’s list, it’s a record that’s meant to be broken, if current values hold. And with comic books continuing to define the pop culture landscape, there’s no reason to think those values will start falling anytime soon.


2. DETECTIVE COMICS #27 (1939) - $2,490,000

Now we get to the big ticket stuff. In the wake of Superman’s Action Comics popularity, publishers were quick to request more superhero titles from their creative teams. Superheroes began to spring up out of the woodwork, and the Golden Age of Comics was born. Writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane contributed Batman - or "The Batman" as he was known in this May 1939 issue - and the character became an immediate hit. But the reason this book is so valuable is because Batman remains a hit; the Dark Knight is currently starring in six DC titles, and we hear he may be in another movie again soon, something about dawn or something.

Issue #27 is still an anthology of detective stories, at its core, featuring usual suspects Fu Manchu, The Crimson Avenger, and detective Slam Bradley. And The Batman’s adventure in this issue, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” is very much a detective story in that vein, eschewing any real origin story for a mystery plot. Still, many of the elements that you recognize today were there from the beginning: a caped crusader, Bruce Wayne, Commissioner Gordon, Gotham City, and even a vat of acid.


3. SUPERMAN #1 (1939) - $768,000

The fourth most valuable comic of all time (the only Marvel title to surpass it is Marvel Comics #1 at $859,000) ranks so high for the very reason you’d expect: this is Superman’s first standalone comic. It’s also the first standalone treatment for any superhero character.

Who cares if it’s basically a rehash of Superman’s exploits from the first four Action Comics strips, which give us most of Kal-El’s origin story and superhero beginnings? Mixed in with a little bit of filler on the Ma ‘n Pa Kent story, this June 1939 issue also finds Supes mussing with an arms dealer’s warmongering, straightening out a crooked mining company, and unfixing a fixed football game.

Of course, Superman’s popularity continued to grow, as DC cranked out 714 issues before rebooting the series in 2011.


4. BATMAN #1 (1940) - $634,000

While Superman’s first standalone issue rehashed much of what fans already knew from Action Comics, Batman’s first issue featured all-new material, building upon what had been established in Detective Comics. This issue dates back to the spring of 1940, when it was released as a quarterly magazine, featuring stories like “The Legend of Batman—Who He Is and How He Came to Be” and “The Giants of Hugo Strange.”

The book also features the stories “The Joker” and “The Joker Returns,” where the Joker first rears his toothy grin. The Joker actually gets stabbed in the heart at the end of the “The Joker Returns,” which should have done him in then and there. But editor Whitney Ellsworth wouldn’t let the maniac die, and another panel was quickly created, showing that the Joker was still alive. And as if that’s not enough for collectors to cackle about, another story, called “The Cat,” offers up the first appearance of the character who would become "Cat-Woman" in issue #2 (and Catwoman shortly after that).


5. DETECTIVE COMICS #1 (1937) - $586,000

Though its biggest moment wouldn’t come for another 26 issues, Detective Comics is more than just the comic book series that gave us Batman. In a bigger sense, it’s the comic book series that gave us DC Comics. And allowed it to flourish, providing the company that would become DC and the company DC became to both reap capital from the series, which became the longest continuously running comic, spanning from March 1937 to August 2011, when it finally tapped out at #881 (before getting rebooted during the New 52 the next month).

And it all began here, with ten "hard-boiled detective" stories about characters like cover boy Ching Lung (a rather unfortunate racial caricature, as can be seen on the cover), The River Patrol (versus Cap’n Scum), and Slam Bradley (created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two years before they’re Superman character would fly up, up, and away).

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A Wonderful Hollywood Movie Star Scrapbook From the 1930s and 1940s

Who so keepeth a scrapbook keepeth a good thing, and the manner in which it is kept is an indication of the presence or absence of certain qualities in the “keeper,” as order, perseverance, continuity of purpose and fixedness of memory.

A scrapbook is, moreover, an index of literary taste and feeling, and a scrapbook, or a series of scrapbooks kept for d number of years, shows how that taste may change, broaden and rise with reading and the reception of new ideas and impressions. Could we have all the scrapbooks of one lifetime extending from youth to age, we should have a literary history of that life. Those scrapbooks are most interesting and valuable which may be classified as personal; kept by someone individual for personal use and behoof; which record the workings of one brain and, in a way, the emotions of one heart.

Here’s an amazing movie star scrapbook from the 1930s and ’40s that belonged to I F Grant. And that’s all we know about it.

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The Prince George’s County Memorial Library Bookmobile in Woodmore, Maryland, 1951

In the early 1900s, a librarian could purchase a bookmobile for as little as $1,000. By the late 1930s, there were as many as 60 bookmobiles nationwide. The Great Depression and two World Wars then sharply curtailed services and bookmobile production around the country.

During the boom years of the 1950s, bookmobile production resurged. Many credit the Library Services Act of 1956 for expanding bookmobile services to reach more than 30 million people in smaller rural communities.

Here's some interesting vintage photos of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library bookmobile in Woodmore, Maryland on July 18, 1951.

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Rare and Stunning Illustrations for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Salvador Dalí, 1969

Salvador Dalí’s incredible illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” (published in 1865) have caused it to become one of the rarest and most sought-after Dalí suites. With the original gouaches published by Maecenas Press-Random House, New York in 1969, the suite now contains 12 heliogravures - one for each chapter of the book - and comes with 1 original signed etching in 4 colors as the frontpiece.

This collaboration brings together arguably two of the most creative minds in Western culture, as both are considered ultimate explorers of dreams and imagination.

Frontispiece

Down the Rabbit Hole

The Pool of Tears

A Caucus Race and a Long Tale

The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill

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Pictures From 1914 Book Show the Principles of Impression Taking and Prosthetic Articulation

Prosthetic Articulation by George Wood Clapp was published by Dentists' Supply Co. of New York in 1914. The book is intended to make plain the principles of impression taking and prosthetic articulation, but not to cover all applications of those principles or to explain every minute detail of technic.

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Burt Reynolds' Awesome Fan Letters From the 1970s

Burt Reynolds is America's newest Sex Symbol, star of movies, TV, stage, and Cosmo centerfolds. Passion flower to eager femmes from 8 to 80, he is a virile, witty, gracious, warm lovable, hotter'n firecrackers hunk of male who likes nothing better than reclining his fabulous fanny on bearskin rugs, rapping with his fans and their endless stream of letters.

In 1972 Signet Books released a remarkable paperback, authored by Burt Reynolds, with the title Hot Line: The Letters I Get ... And Write! It was less a portrayal of Reynolds’ life as a man of letters than a kind of palatable, not X-rated version of his Cosmo pictorial.

And what letters they write! Raunchy, desperate, funny, frantic, sassy, saucy, weird and whacky! Burt takes 'em all in stride, never blowing his fantastic cool as he answers some pretty way-out queries.

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To Kill a Mockingbird: 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Harper Lee's Classic 1960 Novel

To Kill a Mockingbird – what was, until recent developments, Harper Lee’s only novel – has been a staple of school reading lists for generations. Teachers and exam boards adore its essay-friendly themes of racism, justice and family values.

Mary Badham, who played Scou, and Harper Lee on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Set in mid-1930s Alabama, the novel focuses on the Finch family: father (and lawyer) Atticus, his 10-year-old son Jem and six-year old Scout, the book's protagonist. When Atticus defends a black man he believes has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman, we see the dramatic events unfold – partly through the innocent eyes of a child, but also through the adult Scout's knowing narration. A side plot concerns the campaign by Scout, Jem and their friend Dill to encourage their reclusive neighbor – Boo Radley – to come out of his house. Both stories come head to head in a shocking conclusion.

Unless you’re still doing your GCSEs, the novel probably won’t be fresh in your mind, so here are 10 things you didn’t know – or might have forgotten – about Harper Lee’s classic:

1. The character of Atticus Finch was inspired by Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a newspaper editor and attorney. In 1919 he defended two black men who had been charged murder. He lost the case. After the men were convicted, hanged and mutilated, he was so disillusioned that he abandoned criminal law.

2. Lee based Scout’s friend Dill on her own childhood friend, Truman Capote, or Truman Persons as he was known then. Bookish and slightly odd children, they bonded over their love of reading and used to make up stories on Lee’s father’s old typewriter. Lee helped Capote research the Kansas murder behind his true crime classic, In Cold Blood.

3. Depression-era Maycomb, where the novel is set, bears a strong resemblance to Lee’s home town of Monroeville, Alabama. In the book, Maycomb is described as “an island in a patchwork sea of cotton fields and timber land”. In 2013, Lee brought a lawsuit against Monroeville’s museum, who she accused of exploiting her fame.

4. Boo Radley’s real name is Arthur: the children call him “Boo” because seeing him frightens them in the same way a ghost would. The Radleys are likely to have been inspired by a family who lived in a boarded-up house in the street from where Lee grew up.

5. Scout’s real name is actually Jean Louise Finch. It's never explained how she got her nickname

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The Story Behind the Photograph of a Girl Reading a Christian Book in the Swinging 60s

“I came across this girl in the Oxford University parks, lying in the summer sun reading a book. It was in the late-60s, not a laptop in sight. It was surprising to find an unshaven armpit, almost as shocking as pubic hair. It’s from The Oxford Pictures, my first photographic essay. It was very much a young man’s vision: anxiety, desire and sexual guilt run right through it, maybe because of my strict upbringing with Sunday school lessons and Christian teaching.”

‘I looked for moments that reflected my sense of being an outside’ … Sex and the Christian by Paddy Summerfield.

“It might have been the swinging 60s, with lots of photos in the papers of girls in miniskirts and Mick Jagger in a white dress, but plenty of people felt they were missing out – that this sexual revolution was somewhere else, out of reach. We felt the barriers rather than the freedoms. So I looked for visual moments that reflected my sense of being an outsider: isolated figures beside the river, or sitting on a park bench.

“I wanted a relationship but also feared having one. So it’s not so much sexuality in the pictures as anxiety over something forbidden. Since I was looking to show alienation and loss, I often photographed people from behind, or with body parts “amputated”. I sensed that many of my young subjects shared my feelings.

“Summer was the perfect time for the project: the stronger the sunlight, the darker the shadows and the greater the melancholy. By making figures fragmented and amputated, they become dehumanised, while turned backs and hidden faces suggest a fear of rejection. Often, I don’t show a particular person, but something more general that can stand for us all.

“Many of the pictures refer to darker sides of sexuality, transgression and prohibition. There’s a punt pole photo where the person is reduced to a naked limb stretching out, grasping the erect pole. Beyond it, there’s a circular hole in the trees. Then there’s a girl in shadows, hidden by her hair, with sunlight sculpting her bare arm into a phallic shape. Such symbols recur throughout, typical of the obsessions of a young adult.

“It’s been a good life, working as a photographer. It’s not a proper job. All day photographing, in and out of pubs in the evening, a bit of noise and mischief and exhibitionism. Back then, we were always talking about pictures: what we understood, what we felt others were saying.

“I may have taken my photographs in Oxford but it was not really my subject. They are a personal document, concerned with expressing my inner life rather than recording the world around me. So by photographing students, I found a way to tell a story of pain. We were all young together, all lonely together. Everyone looks for love, everyone. We don’t all find it.”

(Photo by Paddy Summerfield, via The Guardian)

Dead at 17: An Illustrated Warning of the Deadly Perils of Self Abuse in 1830

Jim Edmonson of the Dittrick Museum has shared a wonderful post on his museum blog about a rare book from the 1830s entitled “Le Livre Sans Titre” (“The Book Without a Title”).

This beautifully illustrated tome is a graphic warning against the perils of self-abuse, or onanism, via the tale of a healthy and handsome young man's slow decline–symptom by terrifying symptom!–under the influence of the deadly vice.

At that time, masturbation was considered by moralists and physicians as a malady which lead to early death.

Edmonson has generously scanned the lovely hand-colored images and translated the captions from French to English, creating a kind of inadvertent 1830s graphic novel.

He was young, handsome; his mother's fond hope

He corrupted himself!... soon he bore the grief of his error, old before his time... his back hunches...

A devouring fire sears his gut; he suffers horrible stomach pains...

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