Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In southern India, a grade separator (better known in the United States as an interchange) was fully opened at a major highway junction in the city of Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. This cloverleaf grade separator is called Kathipara Junction, and it was formally inaugurated by Tamil Nadu’s chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi. Kathipara... 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 →
In Siam (now known as Thailand), the Chaloem Sawan 58 Bridge made its formal debut in the capital city of Bangkok. The bridge, crossing the northern end of a manmade moat called Khlong Khu Mueang Doem in Bangkok’s present-day Phra Nakhon District, was opened by King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) on the second anniversary of the... 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 →
The cargo ship ARA Canal Beagle was launched in Buenos Aires. She was named after the Beagle Channel, a strait in Tierra del Fuego (an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland). Canal Beagle was the first of three Costa Sur-class cargo ships built for the Argentine Navy to replace increasingly obsolete... 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 →
Racewalking champion Jared Tallent was born in the city of Ballarat in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Tallent won his first Olympic medal when he finished third in the men’s 20 kilometers (km) race walk (a distance of 12.4274 miles). He earned a silver medal at those games... Continue Reading →
At the age of 71, Minoru Saitō set sail from his native Japan for a circumnavigation of the globe on board his 50-foot-long yacht Shuten-dohji II. While Saitō previously sailed around the world on his own a total of six times, this particular trip was notable because it would make him the oldest person to... 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 →
Transportation History 