Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In the Austrian Empire, the first segment of a railway to connect the capital city of Vienna with the pivotal Hungarian city of Győr (the halfway point between Vienna and Budapest) was officially opened. This initial section had been constructed between the town of Baden, which is 16 miles south of Vienna, and the Austrian... Continue Reading →
Engineer and helicopter designer Étienne Edmond Oehmichen established a new aviation record in his native France. He did so by flying his helicopter Oehmichen No. 2, which he had designed and built a couple of years earlier, around a triangular closed circuit of approximately six-tenths of a mile. This flight took seven minutes and 40... Continue Reading →
A transportation milestone for the Tsar-ruled Russian Empire took place when the first two trams with electric motors arrived in Kiev. On the same day as their arrival, both trams underwent test runs on Sahaydachny Street in the city. The trams, which were built by renowned engineer Amand Struve (1835-1898), marked the start of the... Continue Reading →
Robert Gerwig, a civil engineer who specialized in designing railways for unusually challenging terrain, was born in the city of Karlsruhe in the Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany). Gerwig studied civil engineering at Polytechnische Schule (the present-day University of Karlsruhe), and initially focused on road construction.... Continue Reading →
A pioneering aviation event in England came to an end when Louis Paulhan finished first in a two-man London-to-Manchester plane race. The French aviator landed in Manchester early in the morning after he had begun his 186-mile flight from London. His competitor, an Englishman named Claude Grahame-White, had been hampered by everything from engine problems... Continue Reading →
Thorvald Ellegaard, one of Denmark’s leading track racing cyclists, died in the Danish community of Charlottenlund at the age of 77. He had been born on the Danish island of Funen in 1877. Ellegaard began competing as a cyclist in 1895, turning professional about three years later. He eventually established himself as an international champion... Continue Reading →
Alojz Knafelc, who created a now-iconic marker for hiking trails, died at the age of 77 in the city of Ljubljana in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (in a region that is now part of the Republic of Slovenia). Knafelc had been born in 1859 in the village of Šmihel in a section of modern-day Slovenia... Continue Reading →
Umberto Cagni, a captain in the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy), set a new transportation record when he and the small party he was leading reached the northernmost point achieved in polar exploration up to that time. Cagni was a close associate of Prince Luigi Amedeo, an Italian duke. When he departed from Norway in... Continue Reading →
Albéric “Briek” Schotte won the 32nd running of the Tour of Flanders, an annual one-day cycling race on cobbled roads in northern Belgium’s Flemish Region (also known as Flanders). The competition first took place in 1913, with the years during World War I marking the only time to date in which it has not been... Continue Reading →
A new station of the Brussels Metro, a rapid transit system serving Belgium’s capital city and several neighboring municipalities, was opened. The Sainte-Catherine metro station owes its name to a nearby historic Catholic church in the section of central Brussels known as the Lower Town. The station marked the western terminus of the Brussels Metro... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 