Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In Egypt, the first section of the Cairo Metro rapid transit system was opened. This section was an 18-mile segment of Line 1 between the city of Helwan in the Greater Cairo metropolitan area and Ramses Square in Egypt’s capital. The first substantive proposal for such a transit service had been made during the 1930s... Continue Reading →
In a major triumph, the Australian racing yacht Australia II won the America’s Cup. Australia II represented the Royal Perth Yacht Club of Australia. The America’s Cup defender, the New York Yacht Club, had held the sailing trophy since 1851. Australian sailor John Bertrand served as the skipper for Australia II, and he and his... Continue Reading →
Champion bicyclist Stanisław Szozda was born in the village of Dobromierz in southwestern Poland. He represented Poland at Summer Olympics in Munich (1972) and Montreal (1976), winning a silver medal in each of those games for the men’s cycling team time trial (in which cyclists race in groups of four from participating nations). Szozda’s other... Continue Reading →
The first section of France’s first high-speed rail line officially began operations. The LGV Sud-Est was being built as a transit link between Paris and Lyon, and the inaugural festivities for the new line included a special train running on the completed segment between Lyon and the commune of Montchanin. As the train sped north... Continue Reading →
Sampo, a pioneering icebreaker that the British manufacturer Armstrong-Whitworth (AW) had just built for the Finnish government, left the AW shipyard in northeastern England for her second sea trial. The first sea trial for Sampo took place about a month earlier and quickly ended in failure when the new vessel’s bow propeller shaft malfunctioned. Sampo’s... Continue Reading →
More than four months after first being opened to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, a new major bridge in Thailand was dedicated. Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej (also known as Rama IX), who reigned from 1946 to 2016, presided over the ceremony. The event took place on the birth anniversary of his deceased brother and immediate predecessor... Continue Reading →
Airline transport pilot and certified flight instructor Wang Zheng (also known as Julie Wang) became the first Asian woman to circumnavigate the Earth in an airplane, and the first Chinese person to fly solo around the world, when she returned to the Texas town of Addison in the Dallas area 33 days after starting her... Continue Reading →
Yacht designer Gustaf Estlander was born in the city of Helsinki in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland (an autonomous region of the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1917). Estlander demonstrated a strong enthusiasm for water transportation early on in life; when he was about 18, for example, he used a canoe to... Continue Reading →
La Vieille lighthouse on the northwest coast of France was first lit. The stone tower is specifically located on a rock known as Gorlebella (meaning “farthest rock” in the Breton language) at the commune of Plogoff. (That commune is the department of Finistère, an administrative division of France’s Brittany region; Finistère is the Breton phrase... Continue Reading →
The Penang Bridge in the Malaysian state of Penang was officially opened to traffic. The dual carriageway toll bridge, which took about three years to build, carries traffic over the Penang Strait and links the industrial town of Perai in the Central Seberang Perai District of mainland Peninsular Malaysia with the George Town suburb of... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 