Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
March 13, 1883 Civil engineer Clifford Milburn Holland was born in the town of Somerset, Massachusetts. His career would encompass construction on several tunnels in and around New York City. His crowning achievement when it came to those tunnels involved the one that now bears his name: the Holland Tunnel, which was built under the Hudson... Continue Reading →
April 6, 1983 Automotive designer Wellington Everett Miller died in Los Angeles at the age of 79. He developed a strong interest in the design of automobiles while attending an annual car show in Los Angeles in 1920, and subsequently took courses in mathematics and mechanical drawing to prepare for a career in that field. In... Continue Reading →
November 20, 1954 Clyde Cessna died in Wichita, Kansas, at the age of 74. By the time of his passing, he had left a large and longtime imprint on the transportation world as an aircraft designer and aviation entrepreneur. Cessna was born in 1879 in Hawthorne, Iowa. When he was only two years old, he... Continue Reading →
November 12, 1901 Industrial designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky was born in the Ukrainian city of Kiev in what was then the Russian Empire. He fled his homeland by 1920 in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended up pursuing a wide-ranging design career that included many transportation makes and models. Throughout a large part of... Continue Reading →
October 2, 1988 The innovative automobile designer Alexander “Alec” Arnold Constantine Issigonis died in Edgbaston, a town and suburban area of Birmingham, England, at the age of 81. In announcing his death, the London-based Guardian newspaper highlighted him as “not only a great and original car designer but someone who put his stamp on a... Continue Reading →
July 12, 1939 Motorcycle designer and entrepreneur Arlen Ness was born in Moorhead, Minnesota. When he was in the sixth grade, Ness moved with his family to California. Prior to his motorcycle career, Ness worked in such positions as a pin setter at a bowling alley, a post office employee, and a furniture mover. Over... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 