FDR And His Secret Train Car

Not a lot of people know about it or have ever even heard about it. Underneath the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, just under the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel sits a long abandoned armored train car. It was built for the use of only one person, President Franklin Roosevelt.
It is something of a little known fact to many Americans today but back when FDR was President between 1933 - 1945 there were very few Americans then that knew about the fact that he suffered from Polio and he in fact was without the ability to walk or even stand on his own. His administration would go to great lengths to keep this fact a secret and did so in many ways. Often when FDR was seen standing with other officials to be photographed by the press he always had bulky leg braces on to keep him from collapsing in a heap to the floor. Very often there would be Secret Service agrents standing next to him on either side who would be holding on to the president to further prevent him from falling to the ground.
The most elaborate length that his government ever went to in order to prevent him from being seen unable to walk in public has got to be the construction of this rail car that now sits under the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It was constructed with double wide doors that would be wide enough for his armored Pierce Arrow Limosine to be driven on board the car and then be able to drive off when they arrived in NYC without anyone ever having to witness FDR struggling to be removed from the car looking helpless. An elevator at the Hotel was even made extra wide in order to fit the whole car on to it and lift the President up to the ballroom of the Hotel where he would not be seen coming out of the car.
The train car was operated until FDR died in April of 1945. The car still remains there today at the Grand Central Terminal. The FDR museum is currently trying to raise the funds nessassery to have the train car moved and possibly in the future publicly displayed in some way as a piece of significant American history.

Space Junk In Earth Orbit Now Worse Than Ever

Officials at NASA now say that the amount of "Space Junk" that is in Earth's orbit is now greater than ever before. They are currently tracking about 22,000 pieces of space debris that they categorize as "big objects," which are pieces of space junk that are larger than about one half of an inch, and countless thousands of smaller objects that are less than one half of an inch in size.
Since 1957 when the Russians launched the first satellite "Sputnik" mankind has been littering the orbit of the Earth with bits and pieces of debris from rocket launches and satellite launches. Much of the stuff over time falls back into Earth's atmosphere and is burned away but some debris achieves too high an orbit in space for that to happen and so it just circles around the Earth for years causing a hazard for space missions and expensive communications satellites. Even the International Space Station from time to time has to adjust its orbit in order to avoid a tracked piece of space junk from hitting it and causing devastating damage.
The amount of space debris increased greatly in 2007 when the Chinese government conducted an anti satellite weapons test. The Chinese launched a missile into orbit to destroy an old weather satellite. When the missile hit its target it shattered it into an estimated 150,000 new pieces of space debris.