Brabham was a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four drivers' and two constructors' world championships in its 30-year Formula One history. Jack Brabham's 1966 drivers' championship remains the only victory by a car bearing the driver's own name. In the 1960s, Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of open wheel racing cars for sale to customer teams, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970. During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three and competed in the Indianapolis 500. British businessman Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham between 1972 and 1988. Under his ownership, Brabham introduced innovations such as the "fan car", in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension, and was the first team to win a drivers' championship with a turbocharged car. Ecclestone sold the team in 1988. Its final owner was the Middlebridge Group, a Japanese engineering firm. Midway through the 1992 season, the team collapsed financially as Middlebridge was unable to meet loan repayments. In 2009 an unsuccessful attempt was made by a German organisation to enter the 2010 Formula One season using the Brabham name.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1808:
The people of Madrid rebelled against French occupation of the city, triggering the Peninsular War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos_de_Mayo_Uprising
1829:
Captain Charles Fremantle of the Royal Navy established the Swan River Colony, the first British settlement on the west coast of Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_River_Colony
1945:
World War II: General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the German troops in Berlin, surrendered the city to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, ending the Battle of Berlin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
1982:
Falklands War: HMS Conqueror launched three torpedoes and sank ARA General Belgrano , the only ship ever to have been sunk by a nuclear-powered submarine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_General_Belgrano
1986:
Henri Toivonen was killed in an accident while leading the Tour de Corse rally, resulting in FISA, the sport governing body for motor racing events, banning the powerful and popular Group B rally cars for the following season. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Toivonen
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
neonism (n): A newly-coined word or phrase; a neologism http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neonism
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world. --Novalis http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Novalis