One Lap of the Web: The Internet celebrates the Mustang

Fifty years ago, Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight champion of the world, "Jeopardy!" debuted, Lockheed went 2,000 mph with the YF-12 and a mop-topped band went on a television show to promote what would be shameless nostalgia for the next 50 years, even while it was happening. Oh, and Ford introduced the Mustang, an event that would be Lee Iacocca's Second Greatest Shining Moment, behind introducing Chrysler's TC by Maserati as the prettiest Italian to arrive stateside since his mother. The World's Fair was 50 years ago this week, and the Internet remembers what it was like when the Mustang came out.

-- At that wild, wonderful World's Fair of half a century ago, the Mustang wasn't just the star attraction. You could also check out a prototype fusion reactor from General Electric, a computerized highway, a machine at the unfortunately named World of Gas that crunched up old dishes and molded new ones and TWA's vision of supersonic transport -- fitting given "Mad Men"'s final season that recently began airing. A season chock-full of slow, mesmerizing shots of Don Draper evacuating a TWA Boeing 707 from the tarmac of Mines Field. It's amusing because TWA is no longer a thriving entity. Neither is smoking indoors.

-- Richard Truett of Automotive News had a neighbor who always came home with Volkswagens, Karmann Ghias and air-cooled curiosities. Until the day he came home with a brand-spankin'-new 1966 Mustang GT: brown, fastback, rally pack and dual exhaust. It changed Truett's life! Mild-mannered Truett moved on from air-cooled nerdiness to real V8 power, chasing girls and flipping the bird at authority like a real rebel, without any sort of cause of which to be a part. At any rate, he bought a 1966 Mustang of his own, also a fastback. Now he has a garage full of British cars. It's unrelated, he swears.

-- Since the car has been around for so long, the Mustang has been in some movies.("Need for Speed" was an ignominious recent addition, which is impressive considering Nicholas Cage drove one.) This would explain why the producers of "Charlie's Angels" (and the producers of "Starman") used Mustang IIs, the former showcasing bedroom poster queen Farrah Fawcett. Parade asks: Can you figure out where the Mustang appeared? We hear some guy named Steve was quite fond of his.

-- Peter DeLorenzo makes this simple, bold claim: "It changed everything." On paper, it didn't seem like much -- especially in this world of platform sharing, now ubiquitous in an ever-wallet-tightening world. But back then, the combination of customizability, simplicity and youthful appeal led to 22,000 orders on the first day alone.

-- And, of course, being a Mustang, shenanigans are bound to happen. Like with this guy.

By Blake Z. Rong