Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
December 18, 1997 The M65 motorway in northwestern England’s ceremonial county of Lancashire was officially completed with the opening of the final segment of that route. This segment encompasses Junctions 1a to 6 within the area between Whitebirk, a suburb in the vicinity of the borough of Blackburn with Darwen; and this motorway’s linkage with... Continue Reading →
December 17, 2012 In the Scottish town of Port Glasgow, the ferry MV Hallaig was launched at the yard of Ferguson Shipbuilders – now known as Ferguson Marine Engineering – on the Firth of Clyde (the estuary of the River Clyde). Nicola Sturgeon (born in 1970), who was serving as deputy first minister of Scotland... Continue Reading →
December 16, 1953 At the Delaware Water Gap – a section where the Delaware River slices through a major ridge of the Appalachian Mountains – a toll bridge connecting New Jersey with Pennsylvania was formally opened to traffic. New Jersey Governor Alfred E. Driscoll (1947-1954) was among the public officials on hand for the Wednesday... Continue Reading →
December 15, 1950 New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal -- owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- made its formal debut. The new facility, which the New York Times proclaimed to be “as revolutionary as it is large,” was constructed to consolidate all of the private bus... Continue Reading →
December 12, 1951 With the holiday season in full swing throughout much of the globe, a four-engined Douglas DC-4 airliner made its way over the North Pole to deliver more than 5,000 letters to Santa Claus. This jolly old elf had been identified as a resident there at least as far back as 1866, when... Continue Reading →
December 11, 1976 On a Saturday morning, a ferry terminal in the city of Larkspur (located north of San Francisco) was opened with considerable fanfare. Larkspur Landing, which is also called Larkspur Ferry Terminal, provides commuter ferry services to downtown San Francisco via the North Bay. This terminal is operated by the Golden Gate Bridge,... Continue Reading →
December 10, 1950 On a Sunday morning, regular operations began for a trolley bus system in the city of Hamilton in Canada’s province of Ontario. These vehicles became the latest form of public transportation launched by the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR), a company that had been serving the city for 77 years by that time.... Continue Reading →
December 9, 2005 The Sunniberg Bridge near eastern Switzerland’s Alpine village of Klosters was officially opened to vehicular traffic nine years after its completion. (“Sunniberg” means “sunny mountain” in German.) This curved multi-span extradosed bridge – a structure that blends the main components of both a cable-stayed bridge and a prestressed box girder bridge –... Continue Reading →
December 8, 1890 Chicago’s Grand Central Station was opened. This passenger railroad terminal, which had been designed by architect Solon Spencer Beman (1853-1914) and completed by the Chicago and Northern Pacific Railroad, was specifically located downtown at 201 Harrison Street (bounded by Harrison, Wells, and Polk Streets as well as the Chicago River). On the day... Continue Reading →
December 5, 1931 The luxury ocean liner SS Manhattan, which had been built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, was launched in Camden, New Jersey. Former First Lady Edith Roosevelt (1861-1948), widow of President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), christened the ship with a bottle containing water taken from various streams throughout the country. This United States Lines... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 