Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
About five months after being launched, the Red Star Line steamship SS Zeeland completed her maiden voyage. The British-flagged ocean liner had departed the Belgian city of Antwerp on April 13, 1901. After being delayed by a thick fog, Zeeland made her way into New York City’s harbor on April 23. Zeeland was built specifically... Continue Reading →
Talk about an unexpected detour . . . Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, a scientist and inventor who also possessed a strong passion for travel via air balloons, found himself inadvertently flying smack into potential wartime intrigue and danger. Lowe, who was born in New Hampshire, in 1832, possessed a tremendous curiosity about the world around him... Continue Reading →
The Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, made history during the first day of battle in the American War of Independence. This structure, immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “the rude bridge that arched the flood,” marked the location where colonial minutemen and others serving alongside them fought British light infantry companies that had come... Continue Reading →
Influential novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway acquired a 38-foot (12-meter) boat that would become an important part of his life and legacy. The boat had been constructed by Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn, New York, at the company’s Coney Island yard. Hemingway, who paid $7,495 for the customized boat, assumed ownership of the vessel in... Continue Reading →
USS Mount Vernon (LSD-39), a dock landing ship built by General Dynamics Corporation (GD) for the U.S. Navy’s use in providing logistical support for ground forces, was officially launched. The ceremony took place at GD’s Quincy Shipbuilding Division in eastern Massachusetts. Eileen Shillito christened the new ship: her husband Barry J. Shillito was serving at... Continue Reading →
Frank N. Piasecki, an engineer, made the second successful U.S. helicopter flight. In 1940, he helped form the P-V Engineering Forum to build and improve upon Igor Sikorsky’s pioneering helicopter flight over American soil the previous year. Piasecki’s company, however, was strapped for cash. He and his engineering team ended up becoming expert scroungers, searching... Continue Reading →
At a press conference at the Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officially introduced the first group of American astronauts. These astronauts would take part in the human spaceflight program called Project Mercury. “Seven young military pilots were presented today as the nation’s future pioneers in space,” reported... Continue Reading →
Varney Air Lines officially began service with a history-making U.S. airmail flight that originated in the city of Pasco, Washington. “America’s most modern and rapid transportation of mail was brought to the northwest today,” reported that day’s edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Walter T. Varney, a pilot in the aviation section of the U.S.... Continue Reading →
Albert Gallatin, secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson, submitted to the U.S. Senate a far-reaching report on the young nation’s critical transportation needs. Over a year earlier, the Senate passed a resolution calling upon the U.S. Treasury Department to prepare and submit “a plan for the application of such means are within the... Continue Reading →
In Oregon, the Astoria and Columbia River Railroad (A&CR) was incorporated to build a long-deferred line connecting the port city of Astoria – located near where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean -- with the rest of the United States. The Salem-based Statesman Journal reported, “The capital stock is fixed at $2,000,000, with A.B.... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 