Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
May 27, 1903 SS Lord Baltimore, a coastal passenger steamship, was launched at the shipyard of Harlan & Hollingsworth in Wilmington, Delaware. SS Lord Baltimore was built by Harlan & Hollingsworth for the Ericsson Line of the Baltimore and Philadelphia Steamboat Company. This vessel was named after Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore (1605-1675), who served... Continue Reading →
May 20, 1972 In Canada’s province of Ontario, a vehicular tunnel in the city of Welland was formally opened. This tunnel, which is part of East Main Street in the city, carries both Niagara Road 27 and the unsigned designation of Highway 7146 beneath the longstanding Welland Canal. The Main Street Tunnel also serves as... Continue Reading →
February 17, 2012 The first cable-stayed bridge in Rio de Janeiro was officially opened. This 780-meter (2,559.1-foot)-long structure, which was named Ponte do Saber (Portuguese for “Bridge of Knowledge”), carries vehicular traffic across the Canal do Fundão (an artificial estuary created in 1951). The bridge serves as a connection between the Ilha do Fundão campus... Continue Reading →
January 16, 1902 A newly completed bridge in Bangkok, the capital of the Southeast Asian country known at the time as Siam, was formally opened. (Siam was the official name of present-day Thailand until 1939 and then between 1946 and 1948.) Construction of the bridge was commissioned in 1901 by Valaya Alongkorn (1884-1938), a princess... Continue Reading →
December 2, 1843 The Alexandria Canal was officially opened to trade and navigation on the Potomac River. (Alexandria was part of the District of Columbia at the time but would be returned to Virginia about two years later.) This canal, which ultimately ran southwards for seven miles (11.3 kilometers) through Alexandria and Virginia’s present-day Arlington... Continue Reading →
January 9, 1960 In a Saturday ceremony, a cantilever truss bridge in northern Delaware was officially dedicated. This structure, which was named the Summit Bridge after a community in that vicinity of the state, crosses the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. (This canal connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay.) The Summit Bridge replaced a... Continue Reading →
October 14, 1812 Construction began on Regent’s Canal in England. The original part of this project started in the area just north of central London. The canal was designed by noted architect John Nash (1752-1835) and owes its name to the then-Prince of Wales and future King George IV (1762-1830), who had assumed the role of... Continue Reading →
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1849. She subsequently risked her life to help others from that state likewise escape to freedom. As an Underground Railroad conductor in those years prior to the American Civil War, Tubman led about 70 enslaved people to the North. In addition, it has been estimated that Tubman... Continue Reading →
October 12, 1962 The Thatcher Ferry Bridge, which spans the Pacific Ocean entrance to the Panama Canal, was officially opened. This bridge, until the debut of the Centennial Bridge in 2004, was the only non-swinging bridge to reconnect the land masses of North America and South America that had been separated by the canal. The... 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 →
Transportation History 