Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Pioneering canal engineer Engebret Soot was born in the municipality of Aurskog (now part of Aurskog-Høland) in southeastern Norway. At the time of Soot’s birth, the Kingdom of Norway was united with the Kingdom of Denmark as a state known as Denmark-Norway; this integrated state remained in existence until 1814, when Norway established itself as... Continue Reading →
Manuel Ferreira and his family in 1926. Photo courtesy of Lighthouse Digest, via Coast Guard Compass, Official Blog of the U.S. Coast Guard. During most of the first half of the 20th century, Manuel Ferreira served as a lighthouse keeper in the then-U.S. territory of Hawaii. Ferreira’s dedication and achievements in this role earned him... Continue Reading →
Jon Sanders set sail from the port city of Fremantle in the state of Western Australia for a planned record-setting series of voyages across the globe on board his 44-foot yacht Parry Endeavour. Sanders, who was born in Western Australia’s capital city of Perth in 1939, aspired to circumnavigate the world a total of three... Continue Reading →
Chinese-American structural engineer Tung-Yen Lin left a formidable legacy when it came to transportation projects across the globe. “He was an extraordinarily creative engineer,” said Karl S. Pister, a former dean of engineering at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who knew Lin for more than a half-century. Lin was born in 1912 in the... Continue Reading →
A hugely successful airborne humanitarian mission in Ethiopia resulted in the establishment of a new and still-intact flight record. Operation Solomon was an Israeli military effort to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel within a tight timeframe. At the time, Ethiopia was in grave danger of political destabilization as the government of Mengistu Aile... Continue Reading →
Sudhir K. Gupta is an Indian-American business executive who made key contributions to transportation during his long career. Gupta graduated with a B.S. degree in marine engineering from the Marine Engineering College in India in 1972 and with a B.S.E. degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan in 1981. He... Continue Reading →
Anatole Mallet, who became a consequential if initially underappreciated engineer and inventor, was born near Geneva, Switzerland. When he was very young, he and his family moved to France. Mallet’s longtime engineering career included helping to build the Suez Canal during the 1860s. His most significant contribution, however, was in the world of railroads. By... Continue Reading →
A fuzzy, many-generations-old photo of Shigeru Serikaku in front of his plane is one of the few images remaining of the adventurous issei from Sashiki, Okinawa. (Courtesy of the Serikaku family, via The Hawaii Herald) As a 13-year-old boy growing up on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Shigeru Serikaku (1890-1971) learned about how the Wright... Continue Reading →
Augusto Pestana, who achieved fame as both a transportation engineer and public official, was born in Rio Janeiro at a time when the city was the capital of the Empire of Brazil. Pestana attended Escola Politécnica do Rio de Janeiro, the oldest engineering school in Brazil, and graduated from there at age 20 with a... Continue Reading →
During the summer of 1992, Eugene Huu-Chau Trinh became the first Vietnamese-American to travel to outer space when he flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist on mission STS-50. This mission lasted from June 25 to July 9 of that year. Trinh was born in 1950 in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City)... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 