Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In the spring of 1985, Taylor Gun-Jin Wang became the first Chinese-American to travel into outer space. Wang had been born in the Jiangxi Province of southeast China in 1940. He and his family moved to Taiwan in 1952, and he graduated from the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan University in Taipei. Wang... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer John Robertson Duigan was born in the town of Terang in the colony (now state) of Victoria in southeast Australia. In 1902, he went to England and enrolled in the City and Guilds of London Technical College in Finsbury. Duigan earned a certificate in electrical engineering from the college in 1904, and the... Continue Reading →
Lawrence Kiyoshi “Larry” Shinoda, who was born in Los Angeles in 1930 to Japanese immigrants, became a highly acclaimed automotive designer. His father died when he was only 12, and not long after that, he and various surviving members of his family were interned with other Japanese-Americans at the relocation camp at Manzanar, California, that... Continue Reading →
One of New Zealand’s best-known bridges was made its official debut on the North Island. The Auckland Harbour Bridge, which was completed three weeks ahead of schedule, spans Auckland Harbour (formally called Waitematā Harbour) and connects the Auckland suburbs of Saint Marys Bay and Northcote. Lord Cobham (Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham), New Zealand’s... Continue Reading →
Rose Lok achieved nationwide fame as a Chinese-American aviation pioneer during the 1930s. Lok, who was born in China in 1912, immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. They settled in a home on Tyler Street in Boston. By the time she was 20, Lok had developed a strong interest in... Continue Reading →
Pioneering canal engineer Engebret Soot was born in the municipality of Aurskog (now part of Aurskog-Høland) in southeastern Norway. At the time of Soot’s birth, the Kingdom of Norway was united with the Kingdom of Denmark as a state known as Denmark-Norway; this integrated state remained in existence until 1814, when Norway established itself as... Continue Reading →
Manuel Ferreira and his family in 1926. Photo courtesy of Lighthouse Digest, via Coast Guard Compass, Official Blog of the U.S. Coast Guard. During most of the first half of the 20th century, Manuel Ferreira served as a lighthouse keeper in the then-U.S. territory of Hawaii. Ferreira’s dedication and achievements in this role earned him... Continue Reading →
Jon Sanders set sail from the port city of Fremantle in the state of Western Australia for a planned record-setting series of voyages across the globe on board his 44-foot yacht Parry Endeavour. Sanders, who was born in Western Australia’s capital city of Perth in 1939, aspired to circumnavigate the world a total of three... Continue Reading →
Chinese-American structural engineer Tung-Yen Lin left a formidable legacy when it came to transportation projects across the globe. “He was an extraordinarily creative engineer,” said Karl S. Pister, a former dean of engineering at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who knew Lin for more than a half-century. Lin was born in 1912 in the... Continue Reading →
A hugely successful airborne humanitarian mission in Ethiopia resulted in the establishment of a new and still-intact flight record. Operation Solomon was an Israeli military effort to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel within a tight timeframe. At the time, Ethiopia was in grave danger of political destabilization as the government of Mengistu Aile... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 