Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
October 12, 1799 An aviation milestone took place when Jeanne Geneviéve Labrosse Garnerin, who was flying in a hot-air balloon in the skies over France, became the first woman to make a parachute descent back to earth. The balloon was approximately 2,953 feet (900 meters) above the ground when she made this descent, with her... Continue Reading →
September 27, 1825 The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) made its debut in northeastern England’s County Durham, thereby launching the first service of locomotive-hauled passenger trains. It linked the village of Witton Park with the market town of Stockton-on-Tees and also provided connections to several coal-mining facilities near the town of Shildon. The S&DR, covering a... Continue Reading →
September 26, 1944 With the United States still fighting the Axis powers during World War II, the U.S. Navy cargo ship USS Beltrami was launched. Beltrami, which had been named after a county in northwestern Minnesota, was built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company at its shipyards in Richmond, California. The launch of Beltrami at Richmond... Continue Reading →
September 17, 1965 A day after becoming the first individuals to travel across the English Channel in automobiles, four Englishmen arrived in the city of Frankfurt in what was then West Germany for a major automobile show. The men arrived at the event in the two Amphicars which they had used for the waterborne trip. The... Continue Reading →
September 6, 1996 In the Netherlands, a recently completed bridge was officially opened by Queen Beatrix in the city of Rotterdam. This combined cable-stayed and bascule bridge was named after the prominent Dutch Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who is also known as Erasmus of Rotterdam. The Erasmus Bridge (“Erasmusbrug” in Dutch), which crosses a distributary... Continue Reading →
August 16, 1983 The first subsea (underwater) tunnel in Norway made its formal debut. This two-lane vehicular tunnel, measuring 9,480 feet (2,890 meters) in length, was built during the course of three years beneath the Bussesundet strait in northeastern Norway. The tunnel connects the town of Vardø on the island of Vardøya with the village... Continue Reading →
August 6, 1885 Queen Victoria of England gave her royal assent to a bill passed by both houses of parliament authorizing the creation of a canal to link the city of Manchester to the Irish Sea. The Queen's formal approval was the final legislative hurdle that had to be overcome to make the Manchester Ship Canal... Continue Reading →
August 2, 1784 A new era for the British postal system took place when the first stagecoach to officially transport mail left Bristol for London. A regular mail-delivery service had already been in place in England for nearly 150 years by that time, with carriers riding horses in what was essentially a “relay race” format.... Continue Reading →
August 1, 1953 The oldest official hiking track in Europe made its debut in Slovenia, which was a part of Yugoslavia at the time and would become an independent country in 1991. The Slovenian Mountain Hiking Trail -- originally called Slovenian Mountain Transversal No. 1 -- made its debut with a total of 80 “control points”... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 