Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
January 25, 1998 In France, a new railway station was opened for service in the commune of Saint-Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris. This station, which is known as La Plaine-Stade de France, had been designed by architect Jean-Marie Duthilleul. The station is a link within the Réseau Express Régional (RER), a hybrid commuter... Continue Reading →
January 7, 1785 The first-ever flight over the English Channel took place when French inventor and aviation pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American physician and scientist Dr. John Jeffries (at the time a British resident) traveled over that body of water in a gas balloon. The travel equipment on board the balloon included silk-covered oars for the... Continue Reading →
December 29, 1959 The first metro system in Portugal was inaugurated in the country’s capital city of Lisbon. Américo Tomás, who served as Portugal’s president from 1958 to 1974, officiated at the dedication ceremony for the initial 3.1-mile (5-kilometer) segment of this pioneering rapid transit service. At six o’clock the next morning, the Lisbon Metro... Continue Reading →
December 21, 1804 The Rochdale Canal in northern England was officially opened. The plans for this canal had been prepared by civil engineer John Rennie, with the Rochdale Canal Company established in 1794 to coordinate the construction of the new waterway. While Rennie developed the designs for the Rochdale Canal, it has been widely acknowledged... Continue Reading →
December 18, 1898 French aristocrat Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official land speed record for an automobile. The 32-year-old Chasseloup-Laubat established this record of 39.3 miles (63.3 kilometers) while driving a Jeantaud Duc electric car at a competition that was sponsored by the magazine Le France Automobile and held in the commune of... Continue Reading →
December 11, 1997 Britannia, a vessel that had served as the royal yacht of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II for more than four decades, was decommissioned in a ceremony at the Portsmouth naval base on England’s south coast. Along with highlighting Britannia’s “brass fittings gleaming in the winter sunshine and flags rippling in a brisk... Continue Reading →
December 8, 1862 After a few delays, a new lighthouse began operations off the western coast of the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. (Guernsey and several other islands in that vicinity of the channel have long constituted the British Crown dependency known as the Bailiwick of Guernsey.) That lighthouse is specifically situated on... Continue Reading →
November 19, 1921 A recently completed railway station was officially opened in the village of Bjorli, which is located along the Rauma river in southern Norway. Bjorli Station was built as the western terminus for the first section of the Rauma Line. That section covered 35.3 miles (56.8 kilometers) between the village of Dombås and... Continue Reading →
November 12, 1901 Industrial designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky was born in the Ukrainian city of Kiev in what was then the Russian Empire. He fled his homeland by 1920 in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended up pursuing a wide-ranging design career that included many transportation makes and models. Throughout a large part of... Continue Reading →
November 6, 1998 The Raftsund Bridge in the northern region of Norway was officially opened to traffic. This structure provides a road route across the Raftsundet strait between Austvågøya and Hinnøya, which are among the larger islands of the Lofoten archipelago in Norway’s Nordland county. The Raftsund Bridge measures 2,333 feet (711 meters) in length and... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 