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The name Mickey Thompson rang a bell, however, we couldn't recall the context. We searched on "mickey thompson" figuring the results would either quickly lead us to the answer or rule out Mickey Thomspon. Our search returned a few promising web pages, although we were nonplussed to discover there wasn't a Mickey Thompson category in Yahoo!. We found the Motor Sports Hall of Fame tribute to "Mr. Speed" where we learned that Mickey Thompson holds more speed and endurance records than any other man in the world, including being the first American to unofficially break the 400 mph speed barrier. But no mention of breaking the sound barrier. A change in strategy was in order, so we searched on "land speed record,"
which led us to Yahoo!'s Land Speed Record category. We clicked on a few sites before finding the answer at a site featuring the North American Eagle. The History of Land Speed Records section presented an exhaustive account of man's quest for speed. To expedite our search, we used the Ctrl+F function to search the text of the page for the word "sound." We learned that on October 15, 1997, the first land-based vehicle broke the sound barrier with a two-way average of 763.035 mph (Mach 1.020). We always double-check out work, so we performed a narrow Yahoo! search on "sound barrier in a car." We were
delighted to see several search results that corroborated our previous research, including this story from CNN about the British Thrust SSC and its team leader, Richard Noble.
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