Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
February 28, 1995 Denver International Airport, which is located approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the downtown section of Colorado’s state capital, officially opened for business. This facility debuted the day after its predecessor, Stapleton International Airport in the northeastern part of Denver, ceased operations after more than 65 years of service. The inaugural festivities... Continue Reading →
African-American publisher Robert Sengstacke Abbott, who was born in Georgia in 1870, creatively utilized a coast-to-coast rail transportation network to disseminate and popularize his newspaper The Chicago Defender. The son of one-time slaves, Abbott launched the newspaper in the Windy City in 1905. The Chicago Defender, focusing on African-Americans and the civil rights challenges that... Continue Reading →
February 26, 1931 Sam Hill, an ambitious businessman, and entrepreneur whose strongest passions included surface transportation died in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 73. While a number of stories about him are likely apocryphal – a key example being that he was the source of the popular saying “What in Sam Hill . .... Continue Reading →
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green first developed an annual guide to help his fellow African-Americans more effectively and safely go on road trips despite the pervasiveness of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination. Green, who was a World War I veteran and New York City mailman, came up with the guide to... Continue Reading →
In 1956, McKinley Thompson became the first African-American car designer for a major automobile manufacturer when the Ford Motor Company hired him. Thompson, who was born in New York City in 1922, recalled that his choice of career first took shape when he was only 12 years old. He noticed one day how sunlight broke... Continue Reading →
February 21, 1935 Luis Antonio Pardo Villalón, a Chilean Navy veteran who became famous for his against-the-odds rescue of explorers in the Antarctic region, died in Santiago at the age of 52. Pardo, who was born in Santiago in 1882, received extensive training as a maritime pilot (a mariner who is skilled in maneuvering vessels... Continue Reading →
African-American motorcycle pioneer Bessie Stringfield was born sometime around 1911 in Kingston, Jamaica. (She was originally called Betsy Leonora Ellis, but she eventually became known as “Bessie” instead of “Betsy”; “Stringfield” was the last name of her third husband.) While born on foreign soil, she became a U.S. citizen after immigrating at a young age to Boston,... Continue Reading →
February 19, 1866 Mary Anderson, a multifaceted entrepreneur who made a major contribution to transportation by inventing the first practical windshield wiper, was born in Greene County, Alabama. Anderson was inspired to create her version of a windshield wiper during a trip to New York City in the winter of 1902. While traveling on one... Continue Reading →
During the final year of World War II, the Red Ball Express proved to be a vital truck convoy system after the Allies broke out from the D-Day beaches in Normandy and steadily advanced towards Germany. The Red Ball Express was formally launched by the U.S. Army Transportation Corps on August 25, 1944, and over... Continue Reading →
February 14, 1888 A new streetcar company was chartered in Georgia to provide a small but important transit link in the north-central part of the state. More specifically, this company was established to better connect the city of Covington and the town of Oxford (incorporated as a city in 1914) with each other as well... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 