Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 18, 2015 Macif, a 98-foot (30-meter)-long vessel, was officially launched. This vessel is an Ultim-class maxi-trimaran, which is a type of multihull boat built with a main hull that has two outrigger hulls (floats) attached to it via lateral beams. Macif -- named for the French insurance company that owns her -- was designed... Continue Reading →
June 23, 2005 HMAS Cessnock (FCPB 210), a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Fremantle-class patrol boat, was decommissioned following more than two decades of service. This vessel was named after the city of Cessnock in the Hunter Region of the Australian state of New South Wales. She was the second RAN vessel to bear the name... Continue Reading →
July 22, 1893 Here’s proof that transportation not only gets you from point A to point B but can also be inspirational. . . It was on this date that 33-year-old Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, found herself taking in a majestic view from atop the Colorado-based mountain Pikes... Continue Reading →
July 19, 1869 Masonry construction was completed on a new lighthouse in the Celtic Sea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. This took place nearly five years after William Douglass, the engineer supervising the project, laid the first stone of the structure. This lighthouse is located on a rock that is 18 nautical miles... Continue Reading →
May 17, 1970 Norwegian maritime adventurer Thor Heyerdahl set sail from Morocco in a boat made out of papyrus for a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The 55-year-old Heyerdahl had achieved fame in 1947 when he sailed 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) in a raft known as the “Kon-Tiki” from Peru to French Polynesia to show that... Continue Reading →
In 2002, Angelina Hidalgo became only the second Hispanic American woman in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to command an afloat unit. As a lieutenant junior grade, she was specifically named commanding officer of the coastal patrol boat USCGC Kingfisher (WPB-87322). This appointment was made just two years after Hidalgo graduated from the USCG Academy... Continue Reading →
February 28, 1900 The U.S. Navy vessel USS Dart (YFB-308) was launched at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY) at the waterfront city of Vallejo, California. MINSY, which is located 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, had been built during the 1850s and was the first U.S. Navy base established on the Pacific... Continue Reading →
September 11, 2001 More than six years after being retired from service by the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), the fireboat John J. Harvey returned to action when she assisted in the large-scale relief and evacuation efforts at the World Trade Center following the deadly terrorist attacks there. Launched in 1931, the Harvey was named... Continue Reading →
June 19, 1971 Garfield “Gar” Arthur Wood, a champion motorboat racer who also achieved fame for various transportation-oriented innovations, died at the age of 90 in Miami, Florida. Wood was born in Mapleton, Iowa, in 1880. He and his family subsequently moved to Minnesota and young Gar Wood developed a lifelong love for boats along... Continue Reading →
May 22, 1849 Abraham Lincoln, at the time 40 years old and a self-described "prairie lawyer" from Illinois (as well as a recently retired one-term U.S. congressman), was issued a patent for a flotation device for the movement of boats in shallow water. To date, this patent is the only one ever registered to somebody... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 