Free Republic

Academy Award-winners Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in FORD v FERRARI, based on the remarkable true story of the visionary American car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and the fearless British-born driver Ken Miles (Bale), who together battled corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and take on the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.

Academics at The University of Manchester have dismissed the long-held argument that the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra was killed by a snake bite. Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum, says venomous snakes in Egypt -- cobras or vipers -- would have been too large to get unseen into the queen's palace. He was speaking to Egyptologist Dr Joyce Tyldesley in a new video which is part of a new online course introducing ancient Egyptian history, using six items from the Museum's collection. According to Dr Tyldesley, the ancient accounts say a snake hid in a basket of figs...

Auto legend Carroll Shelby died Thursday night at Baylor Hospital in Dallas at the age of 89. Carroll Shelby's shadow stretched out Texas tall across nearly the whole of the world's automotive landscape. A natural as a race driver, he won three U.S. sports-car championships in Ferraris and Maseratis, and for Aston Martin he won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans with British co-driver Roy Salvadori. Turning automaker in the 1960s, he fathered the Cobra, an Anglo-American hot rod of crude conception but stunning effectiveness that swept the tracks of North America and wrested a world manufacturer's title from...

An 800-horsepower Shelby Cobra, once the personal car of the racing veteran who developed the iconic vehicle, has sold for $5.5 million at auction, a record for an American car. ADVERTISEMENT The sale of the 1966 Shelby Cobra "Super Snake" brought a packed house to its feet Saturday at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction after a pair of bidders drove the price up. Carroll Shelby, 84, who created the Cobra in the '60s using Ford engines and a British sport car chassis, said he built the Super Snake -- with twin superchargers on a 427 cubic inch V-8 -- and...