Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 29, 1911 Hilda Hewlett became the first British woman to earn an airplane pilot’s license. Hewlett, who was 47 at the time, received certificate number 122 from the Royal Aero Club after she completed a test flight at Brooklands Aerodrome near the town of Weybridge in southeastern England. Hewlett had been born in Central... Continue Reading →
August 22, 1882 French aviation pioneer Raymonde de Laroche was born in Paris. While originally known as Élise Raymonde Deroche, she adopted Raymonde de Laroche as her name by the time she turned 20 and had begun an acting career. She enjoyed playing sports as a child, but as a young adult, she acquired an... Continue Reading →
August 16, 1945 In England, the lifeboat Foresters Centenary was taken out into the North Sea to help dozens of people who were stranded together on a vessel. This operation was only one of many rescues undertaken throughout the years by the lifeboat in the waters off England’s eastern coastline. On that summer day in... Continue Reading →
August 14, 1893 With the passage of the Paris Police Ordinance, France became the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration. "Each motor vehicle shall bear on a metal plate and in legible writing the name and address of its owner, also the distinctive number used in the application for authorization,” read this ordinance. “This plate... Continue Reading →
August 7, 1908 In Italy, a front-page announcement in the Milan-based newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport (The Sports Gazette) formally marked the start of a new chapter in the nation’s bicycling history: the inaugural multi-day bicycle race known as the Giro d’Italia (Tour of Italy) would take the place the following year under the newspaper’s... Continue Reading →
August 1, 1946 A major European airline was established to handle the intercontinental flights of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This new entity was named Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), and it specifically started out as a consortium pooling together the operations and resources of Swedish Intercontinental Airlines, Danish Air Lines and Norwegian Air Lines. Per A.... Continue Reading →
July 23, 2004 In the city of Mostar in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a celebration was held to commemorate the opening of a rebuilt version of a centuries-old bridge crossing the river Neretva. (Mostar is 45 miles, or 72.4 kilometers, southwest of Sarajevo.) The festivities for the rebuilt Mostar Bridge (also known as... Continue Reading →
July 19, 1843 In southwestern England, the record-setting iron steamship SS Great Britain was launched at Bristol Harbour amid great fanfare. Prince Albert, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom and the husband of Queen Victoria, arrived in Bristol at ten o’clock that morning to participate in the festivities for the new vessel. The Illustrated London... Continue Reading →
July 10, 1904 The final section of the Albula Railway in Switzerland’s easternmost and largest canton (member state) of Graubünden made its formal debut. This 1.9-mile (3-kilometer)-long segment links the municipality of Celerina with the village and internationally renowned spa resort of St. Moritz, and it began operations a year after the opening of the... Continue Reading →
July 1, 2000 The Øresund Bridge, which spans across the Øresund strait and connects Denmark with Sweden, was officially opened. The structure encompasses both the double-track Øresund Railway and four lanes of the international highway European route E20. The bridge runs for about five miles (eight kilometers) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island... Continue Reading →
