Tote'm Blog
10 Fun Facts About Bicycles
In the past few years bicycles have become not only an important transportation method but a lifestyle. Here's 10 fun facts about bicycles for you:
• A feminist and social reformer Susan B. Anthony who travelled several miles in different vehicles and transportation methods, once said that the modern bicycle “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world”.
• In the U.S. (the state of Michigan, to be precise) there is a highway that is the perfect road for cycling, because motor vehicles are banned from this highway. Highway M-185 is every cyclist's dream, the restriction dates back to 1898, so it is the perfect road for skates, horses and runners, among others.
• In 1940 two Jews called Hans and Margaret Rey fled from Paris on bicycles that Hans built. They were escaping from Nazis. One of the few possessions they carried on it was a manuscript of the first Curious George book, which was published later in New York.
• In the UK the speed limit is something real and respected by the community and is also applied on bicycles, you can have some troubles with law only for cycling too fast, one can be charged with “cycling furiously”.
• Bicycles have been recognized as a very useful tool. Actually, UPS was founded by two teenagers with only $100 Borrowed from a friend and one bicycle.
• Bicycles can also help change the world; a Korean man called Okhwan Yoon left his business to ride a bicycle around the world in order to support world peace. He has biked across 192 countries through 6 continents and survived several accidents and problems.
• In Netherlands there are more bikes than people.
• In the US, the San Francisco Police Department estimates that most bike thefts are committed by drug addicts, especially because in the streets bicycles are considered as something really easy to trade.
• The fastest bicycle in the world took a lot of years to be handcrafted, has an approximate top speed of 250mph. It can travel 150 feet for every pedals’ turn, with a cost of £1,000,000, this model is a strong and magnificent machine.
• In Denmark, a bike helmet law was partly defeated because of the evidence that enforced helmet laws were going to make less people use their bicycles, especially young people and utility journeys.