 Some people shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel. Others shouldn't be allowed behind the typewriter. 
We always try to highlight nice art, but Duane Rimel's 1961 novel Carnal Psycho, with its cheap cover work, was an add-on to a group of other books we acquired. It went unread for a while, until a few days ago when we decided to take a shot in the dark. Set in a place called Layton, Idaho, the main character Mark Jason accidentally runs over a woman on a misty highway, killing her. A month later Jason is himself hit and injured by a car, and the driver escapes. That's all backstory.
As the book opens Jason is receiving threatening calls, with the voice on the other end promising to kill him, or failing that, kill his friends. And indeed, people around him are slain. One is run down by an automobile, and sabotage to Jason's car causes another death. All that makes the “carnal” of the title a pun, we suppose, since sex is not the focus of the book. Anyway, Jason puts on his amateur sleuth pants to try and solve the mystery of who wants to kill him.
The main issue with Carnal Psycho is that it isn't well written. There are a few interesting moments, and a few notable turns of phrase, such as when the killer is described as, “this sly loosener of bolts, this driver of cars, this deadly amanita,” but overall the book is inconsequential and unrecommendable. We haven't read Rimel's previous effort Carnal Orgy, but we can't help wondering if it's about cars too. We'll never find out, because we're never going to ride with him again. That's a guarantee. 
 Knievel’s grandest stunt nearly results in fatal Snake bite. 
Photo of American motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, from today 1974, just before his ill-fated attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon while strapped inside a steam-powered rocket. Knievel was the most famous daredevil in history at this point, and had conceived the Snake River feat as a way to further burnish his already considerable legend. But the jump failed when a chute accidentally deployed, causing the cycle to float into the canyon, where it crash-landed mere feet from the river. Had it landed in the water, Knievel would have drowned due to a jammed restraint harness, but instead he lived to jump another day.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Hitler Marries Braun
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia's Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden. 1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon. 1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing. 1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe. 1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
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