"But the bicycle, with its recently invented brakes and pneumatic tires, was seen by doomsayers as just another nail in the coffin of civilization. Women were riding bicycles, contributing to the decline of morals and accelerating the collapse of social harmony. New-fangled sports, rambling, and cycling threatened rank, order, and culture. Leon Bloy perceived this link when he told an editor in 1900 that 'la bicyclette tuera le livre' [Scooter: the bicycle will kill the book] (Ceci tuera cela [Scooter: this will kill that])." - Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages by Eugen Weber, pg. 22-23"The area around the lower-Amazon city of Santarem is an exception. West of town, the Tapajos pours into the Amazon from the south, creating an inland bay that at high water is fifteen miles wide and a hundred miles long. The flood rises high enough to cover low river islands in knee-deep water, leaving their trees to stand out like miracles in mid-channel. Fishers from town ride their bicycles into little boats, parking the bikes while working by hanging them in the offshore trees." - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, p. 292.
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