Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Katherine Johnson was one of the pioneering National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) African-American females to be featured, along with supervisor and mathematician Dorothy Vaughan and engineer Mary Jackson, in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. (Johnson was portrayed in that Oscar-nominated film by Taraji P. Henson, with Octavia Spencer playing the part of Vaughan and... Continue Reading →
February 27, 1869 Greece’s first railroad line – as well as one of the oldest metropolitan-area transit systems in the world – was officially opened to serve Athens and its vicinity. The Athens & Piraeus Railway commenced its regular operations along a 5.5-mile (8.8-kilometer) route with a steam locomotive that pulled six cars from the... Continue Reading →
February 26, 1930 The Texas Highway Commission (a predecessor of today’s Texas Transportation Commission) approved the designation of a new highway to be built through the longtime State Cemetery in the city of Austin. The origins of this cemetery in the eastern part of Texas’s state capital date back to the 1850s. The State Cemetery,... Continue Reading →
February 25, 1985 In Australia, a major milestone for Kendell Airlines took place when that record-setting regional airline in Australia, added the twin-engine turboprop aircraft Saab 340 to its fleet. These 34-seat civilian planes, which had made their public debut only two years earlier, were built by the Swedish aerospace and defense company Saab AB... Continue Reading →
February 24, 1914 In the southeastern area of present-day India, a new railway bridge connecting the town of Mandapam on the mainland with Pamban Island was officially opened. At the time of the bridge’s debut, this region was part of an administrative subdivision of British India known as the Madras Presidency. The structure is called... Continue Reading →
Edward Davis was among the first African-Americans to own and operate a car dealership. He was born in 1911 in Shreveport, Louisiana. At the age of 15, he went to live with an aunt in Detroit in order to have access to better educational opportunities. Davis attended Cass Technical High School in the Motor City... Continue Reading →
February 20, 1898 In Switzerland, a referendum calling for the creation of a state-owned railway company was approved by a vote of 386,634 to 182,718. “Swiss Railways for the Swiss People” had served as the rallying cry for the supporters of this measure. The demand for a national railway system in Switzerland was rooted in... Continue Reading →
February 19, 1917 Oregon Governor James Withycombe signed into law a measure that included provisions for reorganizing the state’s highway commission, in a major milestone for strengthening transportation infrastructure in the Beaver State and making that network more reflective of the public will. These provisions in the wide-ranging Oregon Highway Law specifically required that the... Continue Reading →
February 18, 1911 The world’s first official mail delivery via airplane took place in the northern area of the present-day Republic of India. At the time, this region of India was under British rule as part of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. French pilot Henri Pequet, who happened to be in the city... Continue Reading →
About two years after the Civil War ended, a milestone in the continuing civil rights struggles of African-Americans took place in Philadelphia, and it involved the city’s transportation network. On March 25, 1867, schoolteacher Caroline LeCount (1846-1923) attempted -- as she had on previous occasions -- to board one of Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars traditionally not... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 