Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 31, 1899 Automotive businessman Freelan Oscar Stanley became the first person to drive a car to the top of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England. He was accompanied by his wife Flora as he navigated his steam-powered Locomobile up the steep 6,288-foot (1,916-meter)-tall mountain. Stanley and his identical twin brother... Continue Reading →
August 30, 1929 Lightship 115 (LV-115) of the U.S. Lighthouse Service was launched in Charleston, South Carolina. As one of the lightships built to serve as navigational aids in waters too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouses, LV-115 was stationed beginning in 1930 at one of the most dangerous places along the entire Atlantic coast... Continue Reading →
August 29, 1891 Bicycle pioneer Pierre Lallement died in Boston at the age of 47. He had been born in 1843 in the commune of Pont-à-Mousson in northeastern France. Lallement became a carriage maker by trade, but eventually developed an even stronger interest in another type of transportation. Specifically, Lallement worked hard on modifying a... Continue Reading →
August 28, 1957 The Grace Line’s cruise ship S.S. Santa Rosa, which would become the last passenger liner built at a U.S. shipyard to remain in active service, was launched at Newport News, Virginia. This vessel was among those designed by the naval architecture firm Gibbs & Cox and built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and... Continue Reading →
August 27, 1910 The first known wireless transmission of a message between an airplane and the ground below took place in Brooklyn, New York. Canadian aviator John Alexander Douglas McCurdy sent this pioneering message from the Curtiss biplane he was piloting 500 feet (152.4 meters) above the earth. He had a 50-foot (15.2-meter) antenna trailing... Continue Reading →
August 24, 1945 The Yosemite Valley Railroad (YVRR) in central California went out service following the run of its last regularly scheduled train. YVRR had been incorporated in San Francisco in 1902 by John S. Drum, William B. Bosley, Sydney M. Ehrman, Thomas Turner, and Joseph D. Smith. The short-line railroad transported both passengers and... Continue Reading →
August 23, 1869 The Milburn Wagon Company was incorporated in Mishawaka, Indiana. The company’s founder was George Milburn, who had been born in England in 1820. Not long after his father’s death in 1835, he and the remaining members of his family left England for what was then British Canada. They settled in the province... Continue Reading →
August 22, 1986 In Utah, a milestone in the development of the Interstate Highway System took place with a ceremony commemorating the completion of I-80 near Salt Lake City. This was the final segment of that east-west route to be opened. The formal debut of that 4.5-mile (7.2-kilometer) section also gave I-80 – running an... Continue Reading →
August 21, 1960 David B. Steinman, a structural engineer who designed a number of notable bridges across the globe, died in New York City. It is not completely clear where he had been born. Several sources indicate that Steinman was born in the town of Chomsk in the present-day Republic of Belarus in 1886 and... Continue Reading →
August 20, 1963 If at first, you don’t succeed . . . Charles Fehn applied for the third time for a patent for a pioneering type of motorcycle that he invented five years earlier. The entrepreneurial Fehn developed a strong familiarity with motorcycles early on in life. Over time, he even began routinely taking motorcycles... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 