Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Francis J. Mee, whose service in the U.S. Navy spanned more than three decades, was born on August 11, 1899, on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwest Minnesota. This reservation is home to the federally recognized White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (also known as the White Earth Nation). Mee’s mother was... Continue Reading →
August 25, 1866 Shipbuilder and naval architect Fop Smit died in the town of Niewe Leckerland (now known as Nieuw Lekkerland) in the Netherlands. He was 88. Smit had been born on October 11, 1777, in the Dutch town and municipality of Alblassderdam. His father Jan Foppe Smith (1742-1807) and uncle Jacques Foppe Smit (1756-1820)... Continue Reading →
July 3, 1828 The North Carolina-based Fayetteville Weekly Observer was one of several newspapers throughout the United States to cite plans for a groundbreaking ceremony on Independence Day for a major canal in the Washington, D.C., region. This new waterway, the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal, would be built along the Potomac River from Washington... Continue Reading →
December 28, 1894 In the town of Cromer on England’s eastern coast, an 18-year-old local resident named Henry Blogg first saw action at sea as a member of the crew of RNLB (Royal National Lifeboat) Benjamin Bond Cabbell II. Blogg had actually joined that crew nearly a year earlier, but it was that holiday-season mission... Continue Reading →
May 18, 1908 Stanley Johnson Marx, who would serve as the head of a leading and influential school bus manufacturer on the west coast of the United States, was born in Oakland, California. In 1927, Marx began working for the California-based Gillig Brothers Company as a mechanic. This company traced its origins to a carriage and wagon shop established in... Continue Reading →
October 7, 1826 The first train of the Massachusetts-based Granite Railway went into service. The Granite Railway was among the first railroads in the United States. This enterprise was established to carry granite from the city of Quincy to a dock on the Neponset River in the town of Milton, where that stone was transported by... Continue Reading →
September 3, 2008 A 44-year-old vessel was acquired by the Brazilian Navy for service as an oceanographic research ship in the Antarctic region. This addition to that navy’s Brazilian Antarctic Program was renamed the Almirante Maximiano in honor of Admiral Maximiano Eduardo da Silva Fonseca (1919-1998). A longtime Brazilian naval officer, Maximiano da Fonesca served... Continue Reading →
John Beargrease, who was also known as Eshquabi, was born in the vicinity of Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior in 1858. He was the son of Moquabimetem, a chief of the Ojibwe people in that region. (The Ojibwe people are part of the group of Native American tribes collectively called the Anishinaabe.) Moquabimetem also... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 