e.b. white on cabs:

"i have personally measured the opening (vertical distance) of a cab door. it is roughly 38 inches. a taxicab is the only thing i know of that expects its patron to enter and leave by an opening 38 inches high. if you had to enter your apartment, your subway, your saloon, your bank vault, or you hall closet through a 38 inch opening, you would be infuriated and would rebel. thirty-eight inches is about one-half the height of a man."

- from a letter to harold ross, in the collected letters of e.b. white.