Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
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 →
November 5, 1893 Industrial designer Raymond Loewy was born in Paris, France. Loewy would spend most of his professional career in the United States, and his wide range of design efforts included many with a transportation theme of some kind. These efforts started at an early age. When he was only 15 years old, for example, Loewy... Continue Reading →
October 29, 1932 The ocean liner SS Normandie was launched into the River Loire at Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 40,000 people – including French President Albert Lebrun and his wife Marguerite – were on hand for the event. Madame Lebrun was selected to christen the ship, and she performed the duty with the world’s largest bottle of champagne. As... Continue Reading →
October 26, 1959 The Valiant, an automobile manufactured by the Plymouth division of the Chrysler Corporation, made its public debut at the 44th International Motor Show in London, England. The new vehicle – measuring 15 feet and four inches (4.7 meters) in length, four-and-a-half feet (1.4 meters) in height, and nearly six feet (1.8 meters) in... Continue Reading →
October 22, 1730 Construction on the original Ladoga Canal, located in the part of northwestern Russia now known as Leningrad Oblast, was completed. The purpose of this transportation route was to link the Neva and Volkhov Rivers and also to allow vessels to bypass the often stormy waters of nearby Lake Ladoga, which was prone to... Continue Reading →
