Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
The fully automated Milnerton Lighthouse went into service on the western coast of South Africa. The 69-foot-tall concrete structure, which is one of the few cylindrical lighthouses along the entire South African coast, is located in the Cape Town suburb of Milnerton on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean’s Table Bay. The lighthouse specifically stands... Continue Reading →
By the late 1870s, more women than ever before were taking part in the then-popular pedestrian races in the United States. Several of the women participating in the sport achieved widespread fame and impressive records, but it was Amy Howard of Brooklyn, New York, who stood out as the era’s foremost and undisputed female walking... Continue Reading →
A new airport made its debut in the Embakasi suburb of Nairobi in what was then the British Colony and Protectorate of Kenya. (British rule came to an end in 1963, with Kenya achieving its independence under a black majority government; the present-day Republic of Kenya was formally established the following year.) Sir Evelyn Baring,... Continue Reading →
In 1922, Helen Mary Schultz of Iowa launched the first woman-owned bus line. Her enterprise, Red Ball Transportation Company, came into existence at a time when bus services were steadily growing as a means of mobility in the United States. Schultz, while working in various temporary jobs in California and Minnesota, closely observed motorized bus... Continue Reading →
Olympic Park railway station made its formal debut at Sydney Olympic Park, a suburb of Sydney in Australia’s state of New South Wales (NSW). Those taking part in the opening ceremony for the station included Bob Carr, premier of NSW. The station was built as part of the Olympic Park railway line, which also began... Continue Reading →
Martha J. Coston made an important contribution to transportation by perfecting and bringing to market a system of maritime signal flares. The Baltimore native was married to Benjamin Franklin Coston, an aspiring inventor who experimented with color-coded night signals as an effective means for ships to communicate with each other and with people on shore.... Continue Reading →
The final part of the Yamate Tunnel in Tokyo, Japan, was opened 13 years after work on the structure began. Nearly all of the deep underground tunnel, which has two lanes in each direction for vehicular traffic, lies beneath a street called Yamate Dori in Japan’s capital city. The Yamate Tunnel has become a key... Continue Reading →
Mary Myers (1849-1932) was a Boston-born professional balloonist (best known as Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut) and female aviation pioneer. She was married to aeronautical engineer Carl Edgar Myers, and together they devoted a great deal of their energies and expertise to the design and use of passenger balloons. On Independence Day in 1880, Mary became... Continue Reading →
The Argentine Navy steam gunboat ARA Uruguay was launched in England, where she had been built by the shipbuilding company Laird Brothers. The new vessel arrived at the city of Montevideo in Uruguay (Argentina’s ally and neighbor) about four months after being launched. It was there that the Argentine Navy formally received the new vessel... Continue Reading →
Luella Bates of Wisconsin played an influential role in the history of trucks during a time when those vehicles – still in an early stage of development and use in the United States – were widely seen as contraptions that should be operated only by men. “Be careful what you say about truck-drivers in general,... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 