Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Olympic Park railway station made its formal debut at Sydney Olympic Park, a suburb of Sydney in Australia’s state of New South Wales (NSW). Those taking part in the opening ceremony for the station included Bob Carr, premier of NSW. The station was built as part of the Olympic Park railway line, which also began... Continue Reading →
Martha J. Coston made an important contribution to transportation by perfecting and bringing to market a system of maritime signal flares. The Baltimore native was married to Benjamin Franklin Coston, an aspiring inventor who experimented with color-coded night signals as an effective means for ships to communicate with each other and with people on shore.... Continue Reading →
The final part of the Yamate Tunnel in Tokyo, Japan, was opened 13 years after work on the structure began. Nearly all of the deep underground tunnel, which has two lanes in each direction for vehicular traffic, lies beneath a street called Yamate Dori in Japan’s capital city. The Yamate Tunnel has become a key... Continue Reading →
Mary Myers (1849-1932) was a Boston-born professional balloonist (best known as Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut) and female aviation pioneer. She was married to aeronautical engineer Carl Edgar Myers, and together they devoted a great deal of their energies and expertise to the design and use of passenger balloons. On Independence Day in 1880, Mary became... Continue Reading →
The Argentine Navy steam gunboat ARA Uruguay was launched in England, where she had been built by the shipbuilding company Laird Brothers. The new vessel arrived at the city of Montevideo in Uruguay (Argentina’s ally and neighbor) about four months after being launched. It was there that the Argentine Navy formally received the new vessel... Continue Reading →
Luella Bates of Wisconsin played an influential role in the history of trucks during a time when those vehicles – still in an early stage of development and use in the United States – were widely seen as contraptions that should be operated only by men. “Be careful what you say about truck-drivers in general,... Continue Reading →
A day after it was officially opened, the first electric tram (streetcar) line in all of Scandinavia began regular operations in Norway’s capital city of Kristiania. (In 1924, the city formally readopted its original name of Oslo.) This tram line was run by the company Kristiana Elektriske Sporvei (KES) as a part of the Oslo... Continue Reading →
On January 1, 1915, Wilma K. Russey became a high-profile transportation pioneer by launching her career as New York City’s first female taxi driver. “New York’s First Feminine Chauffeur Starts Business on New Year’s Day,” proclaimed a headline in the next day’s edition of the New York Times. Russey, who had been employed for more... Continue Reading →
Costa Rica’s first nationally operated airline, Empresa Nacional de Transportes Aéreos (ENTA), was established by an American émigré named William Schoenfeldt. The airline made its debut a little over two decades after the first-ever plane flight in the Central American country had taken place. When ENTA began operations, it provided only intermittent flight service between... Continue Reading →
Mary Ann Brown Patten – through highly unexpected and unique circumstances – became the first female commander of a U.S. merchant vessel. Her husband Joshua Patten was a sea captain who, in 1856, was given command of the clipper ship Neptune’s Car for a voyage from New York to San Francisco to transport cargo. Mary,... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 