Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
During the late 19th century, Tillie Anderson established herself as a fiercely determined and highly accomplished bicyclist. Anderson was born in southern Sweden in 1875. She immigrated to the United States in 1891 and ended up living in Chicago. Anderson worked as a seamstress in a tailor’s shop. When she was 18, Anderson bought her... Continue Reading →
March 21, 1869 Albert Kahn, who helped create a number of key transportation-oriented facilities and is widely regarded as the “father of modern factory design,” was born in Rhaunen in the Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany). When Kahn was 11, he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Detroit. Kahn worked at... Continue Reading →
On August 7, 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey and her three passengers became the first women to complete a coast-to-coast automobile trip when they arrived in San Francisco 59 days after leaving New York City. Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife, and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, made the 3,800-mile (6,115.5-kilometer) trek in a green Maxwell DA touring... Continue Reading →
March 19, 1902 Joshua James, a renowned sea captain credited with saving numerous lives from shipwrecks along the coast of Massachusetts, died at the age of 75. James served as keeper of the U.S. Life-Saving Service’s Point Allerton Station near the town of Hull (located at the southern land point of the entrance to Boston... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Neta Snook Southern was born in the city of Mount Carroll Illinois, in 1896. While best known for teaching Amelia Earhart how to fly, Southern also left behind a legacy of several other noteworthy aviation achievements. Southern graduated from Shimer School (now Shimer College) in Chicago in 1912. Three years later, she enrolled... Continue Reading →
Civil engineer Marilyn Jorgenson Reece was born in the city of Kenmare in South Dakota in 1926. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1948, Reece moved to Los Angeles and started working for the California State Division of Highways (now part of the California Department of Transportation,... Continue Reading →
March 14, 1908 Motorcycle designer and manufacturer Philip Vincent was born in London, England. It was during his time as a student at Harrow School, a London-based boarding school for boys, that Vincent was introduced to motorcycles. His interest in this means of mobility steadily grew. He bought his first motorcycle, which was a second-hand... Continue Reading →
In 1911, Nan Aspinwall made history as the first woman to successfully complete a solo transcontinental trip by horse. She covered a total of 4,496 miles (7,235.6 kilometers), arriving in New York City 180 days after setting out from San Francisco on her thoroughbred mare Lady Ellen. Aspinwall, who had been born in 1880, established... Continue Reading →
March 12, 1941 The car ferry S.S. City of Midland 41 made her maiden voyage along Lake Michigan between Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Ludington, Michigan. (The ferry’s namesake was the city of Midland in central Michigan.) The all-steel vessel, which had been launched the previous September, was constructed by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company for the Pere Marquette Railway’s... Continue Reading →
Maritime transportation entrepreneur Thea Foss was born in the hamlet of Eidsberg in Norway in 1857. She immigrated to the United States in the early 1880s. Not long after arriving in her new homeland, she married fellow Norwegian immigrant Andreas Oleson in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The couple subsequently changed their last name to Fossen to distinguish themselves... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 