Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 13, 1959 In New York City, construction began on a major bridge that would provide an urgently sought-after vehicular connection between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island at a tidal strait in New York Harbor known as The Narrows. This planned structure was named after Giovanni de Verrazzano, an Italian explorer who in... Continue Reading →
August 12, 1919 The U.S. Army’s Cross-Country Motor Transport Train, four days after arriving in Wyoming and making its first stop in the capital city of Cheyenne, continued to snake its way through the south-central part of the Equality State. After camping for the night on a hillside south of the town of Medicine Bow,... Continue Reading →
August 9, 1910 In Cincinnati, the Ahrens Fire Engine Company – a firefighting vehicle manufacturer that had been formed in 1868 from a machine shop bought out by ambitious German immigrant Chris Ahrens – was reorganized as the Ahrens-Fox Fire Engine Company. Chris Ahrens’ son John was designated vice president of this restructured family enterprise. John... Continue Reading →
August 8, 1303 In the eastern Mediterranean basin, a violent earthquake – and the major tsunami it triggered – led to widespread destruction and death throughout the region. The best-known casualty of these natural disasters was the longstanding lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt, that had achieved renown as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient... 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 6, 1889 Railroad promoter and builder George Laidlaw died at the age of 61 near the community of Coboconk in the south-central region of Ontario, Canada. Laidlaw, who was born in the Highlands of Scotland in 1828, had an irrepressibly adventurous approach to life. This was in large part the driving force for him to... Continue Reading →
August 2, 1947 About nine years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the bill formally establishing the Interstate Highway System, the general locations of the first designated routes for that proposed network were announced. This announcement was made by Major General Philip B. Fleming, administrator of the Federal Works Agency (which included the Public... 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 31, 1865 In the northeastern section of Australia, the inaugural train run of the world’s first narrow-gauge mainline railway occurred on a Monday morning in the colony (present-day state) of Queensland. A large number of people gathered to witness the record-setting railway’s formal debut, which took place on what the Queensland Times called a... Continue Reading →
July 30, 1978 It was a day of many logistical challenges and a large number of confused motorists in the southernmost section of Japan, as Okinawa Prefecture (one of the nation’s 47 main administrative divisions) officially switched its traffic patterns from driving on the right-hand side of the road back to driving on the left-hand... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 