Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Miles Clark, who established a new sailing record in Europe, was born in the town of Magerherafelt in Northern Ireland. Clark was a geography student at Downing College in England, and his strong sense of curiosity and international adventure eventually led him to become a freelance travel writer and photographer. Clark also served as features... Continue Reading →
Henri Pigozzi, who served as the general commercial representative for the Italian automobile producer Fiat S.p.A. in France, founded the company Société Industrielle de Mécanique et Carrosserie Automobile (Simca)-Fiat at the one-time Donnet manufacturing factory in the French commune of Suresnes (a western suburb of Paris). Pigozzi launched Simca-Fiat as a distributor for Fiat automobiles... Continue Reading →
Oceanographer and engineer Jacques Piccard, whose work involving underwater vehicles revolutionized deep-sea exploration, died at the age of 86 at his Lake Geneva home in Switzerland’s municipality of Cully. Piccard was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1922. He came from a renowned Swiss family of adventurers and transportation pioneers. His father, Auguste Piccard, was an accomplished inventor and... Continue Reading →
ICGV Thor (Þór), a new patrol vessel built for the Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG), arrived in Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík two-and-a-half years after being launched at the ASMAR Naval Shipyard in Talcahuano, Chile. The ship was named after the Norse god Thor. The origins of ICGV Thor can be traced to a proposal drafted... Continue Reading →
Jens Theodor Paludan Vogt, a civil engineer, and public transportation pioneer died at the age of 62 in Norway’s capital city of Kristiania. (In 1924, the city formally readopted its original name of Oslo.) Vogt had been born in 1830 in the Norwegian parish of Fiskum. To say that Jens Vogt came from a highly... Continue Reading →
Carlo Abarth, whose accomplishments spanned various modes of surface transportation, died in Vienna, Austria, just a few weeks before his 71st birthday. He had been born Karl Albert Abarth in 1908 in Vienna, which at that time was the main capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Abarth later became a naturalized Italian citizen, his first... Continue Reading →
The initial segment of a railway in present-day Italy was opened between the cities of Turin and Novara. At the time, this region was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. This railway was built by renowned English civil engineering contractor Thomas Brassey, who carried out the project on behalf of the Società Vittorio Emanuele (Victor... Continue Reading →
In southeastern Norway, a new railway line connecting the village of Eidsfoss with the municipality of Tønsberg was dedicated. Jørgen Løvland, who was the minister of labor at the time and would briefly serve as prime minister of Norway later in the decade, officially opened the Tønsberg-Eidsfoss Line (Tønsberg-Eidsfossbanen, or TEB). At the time of... Continue Reading →
In present-day Poland, a new railway station was opened in the city of Kraków. (At the time, the city had recently become part of a section of the Austrian Empire known as the Grand Duchy of Kraków.) On the same day of the station’s formal debut, the first train to operate at the facility departed... Continue Reading →
Automotive entrepreneur August Horch was born in the municipality of Winningen in the Kingdom of Prussia (now part of Germany). After graduating from Mittweida Technical College with a degree in engineering, Horch pursued a career in shipbuilding before shifting his focus to another mode of transportation. In 1896, he began working for automobile pioneer Karl... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 