Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
A pioneering railway officially began operations in the city of Liverpool in northwestern England at seven o’clock in the morning. In reporting on the first runs of the railway’s trains that day, the Liverpool Echo noted that “the carriages appear to be fairly well filled with passengers.” The Liverpool Overhead Railway, which originally spanned five... Continue Reading →
Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb, a well-established female trailblazer of the skies, was born in Norman, Oklahoma. Her father was a pilot and, with his encouragement, she developed a strong interest in aviation at an early age. By the time she was 12, Cobb was learning how to fly in her father’s 1936 Waco Aircraft Company... Continue Reading →
Photo of Ellen Paneok courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program. Aviation pioneer Ellen Evak Paneok died in Anchorage, Alaska, at the age of 48. She had been born in 1959. (Accounts vary on whether her birthplace was in Alaska or Virginia.) Her parents were Bernice Evak Burgandine, who was of Inupiat... Continue Reading →
A new lighthouse went into service at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa and the start of the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Cape Agulhas Lighthouse was the third lighthouse to be built in present-day South Africa. At the time of the lighthouse’s debut, Cape Agulhas was a part of... Continue Reading →
Alvin Drew, an African-American NASA astronaut, became the 200th person to walk in space. He conducted this spacewalk as a member of the six-person crew on STS-133, the 39th and final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery. Drew’s milestone excursion outside a spacecraft in orbit took place just a little over 16 years after fellow astronaut... Continue Reading →
A large-scale celebration was held for the opening of the new Sellwood Bridge spanning the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. The deck arch bridge, connecting Portland's Sellwood and Westmoreland neighborhoods on the east side of the river with Oregon Route 43/Macadam Avenue on the west side, replaced a bridge with the same name that had been... Continue Reading →
Marshall W. "Major" Taylor (1878-1932), the first African-American to become a world-champion cyclist, departed the Australian city of Melbourne via train during the course of his second racing tour in the Land Down Under. (His first tour in Australia took place the previous year.) The Indiana-born Taylor had launched his professional cycling career at New York... Continue Reading →
Robert Smalls, whose courage and sailing expertise gained freedom for himself and other slaves during the Civil War, died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina, at the age of 75. Smalls had been born into slavery in that city in 1839. When he was 12, his master sent him to Charleston to work there as... Continue Reading →
Today in African-American Transportation History - 1997: A Trailblazer Retires from the U.S. Air Force African-American aviation pioneer and U.S. Air Force (USAF) Major General Marcelite Jordan Harris retired after more than three decades of service in the nation's military aerial service branch. Harris, who was born in Texas in 1943, initially sought to pursue... Continue Reading →
The comparatively brief but historically significant U.S. Navy career of Lieutenant Commander Edward Swain Hope, who had been the highest-ranking African-American naval officer during World War II, came to an end when he was officially released from active duty. Hope was born in 1901 in Atlanta. While his naval service did not actually take place... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 