Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
May 18, 1997 The STS-84 spaceflight mission was very much in progress three days after its seven-member crew lifted off from John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on board Space Shuttle Atlantis. This mission was part of the Shuttle-Mir Program, a collaborative effort between the United States and Russia that included having American... Continue Reading →
May 17, 1976 The first commuter aerial tramway in North America was officially opened in New York City. This tramway, spanning the East River, serves as a public transit connection between Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. (An aerial tramway is a means of overhead transportation in which as many as two... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Ben Kuroki was born in Gothenburg, Nebraska. His parents were Japanese immigrants. Kuroki grew up in the Cornhusker State, graduating from high school in 1936. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kuroki’s father encouraged both him and his brother Fred to join the U.S. military. The brothers were turned down... Continue Reading →
The Board of Road Commissioners for Alaska – better known as the Alaska Road Commission (ARC) – was organized by order of U.S. War Secretary (and future president) William Howard Taft to oversee construction of highways in what was then an American territory. The ARC was created in response to a steadily growing demand for adequate... Continue Reading →
In the midst of World War II, U.S. Navy Commander Gordon Paiʻea Chung-Hoon (1910-1979) took over command of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Sigsbee in the Pacific Theater. Chung-Hoon, who was born in Honolulu to a Chinese-English-Hawaiian father and a Hawaiian mother, had made history in 1934 as the first Asian American/Pacific Islander graduate of the... Continue Reading →
The Los Angeles Times highlighted an important but increasingly overlooked aviation pioneer from the World War II era. Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese-American woman to fly in support of U.S. military efforts, and the article in the Los Angeles Times focused on a 1944 letter from her to one of her still-surviving relatives.... Continue Reading →
The Argentine Navy ship ARA Buenos Aires was launched. The vessel, which Marine Engineer magazine characterized at the time as “a very remarkable cruiser,” was built by British manufacturer Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. Ltd. The launch of the Buenos Aires took place at the company’s shipyard in the city of Newcastle in northeastern England. “She... Continue Reading →
In a ceremony at the U.S. Labor Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., approximately 12,000 Chinese immigrant laborers were inducted into the Labor Hall of Honor for their work on the First Transcontinental Railroad during the 1860s. These laborers were the first Asian Americans to be inducted into the Hall of Labor since its establishment in... Continue Reading →
A few years before European automotive pioneers such as Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler introduced their own versions of the "horseless carriage," a lawyer and inventor from Rochester, New York, named George B. Selden filed the first U.S. patent for an automobile. Selden, who was 32 at the time, submitted a patent application for what... Continue Reading →
Manjirō Nakahama became the first known Japanese immigrant to the United States when he arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on board the American whaleship John Howland. He was only 16 at the time. Manjirō had been a fisherman in the coastal village of Naka-no-hama on Shikoku, one of Japan’s four main islands. His life underwent... Continue Reading →
