Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
July 11, 2005 On the north end of the island of Montserrat – a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean Sea – an airport in the village of Gerald’s first went into service. The formal opening of this airport took place nearly five months after it had been dedicated by Anne, Princess Royal, daughter of... Continue Reading →
June 11, 1910 Cerchez & Co., the first aircraft company in Romania, was formally inaugurated. (At this time, the present-day republic of Romania was still a kingdom.) Cerchez & Co. was located in the town of Chitilia, which is near Romania’s capital and largest city of Bucharest. This company was owned and operated by lawyer... Continue Reading →
May 20, 1946 Jacob Ellehammer, a longtime watchmaker who also used his mechanical talents to make seminal contributions to transportation, died in Denmark’s capital city of Copenhagen. He was 74. Ellehammer was born in the Danish village of Bakkebølle on June 14, 1871. After completing his apprenticeship as a watchmaker, he moved to Copenhagen and... Continue Reading →
May 16, 1929 The first-ever “Best Picture” Oscar went to a movie about planes. Wings, which was also the only silent movie to win that award, told the story of two men who are in love with the same woman and end up becoming fighter pilots in World War I. The actors who played these men... Continue Reading →
May 14, 2005 French pilot Didier Delsalle (born in 1957) became the first and to date only person to land a helicopter on top of Mount Everest. With an elevation of 29,030 feet (8,848 meters), Mount Everest -- located at the border between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas -- is Earth’s highest mountain above... Continue Reading →
April 12, 1997 A new and larger terminal for the international airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca (also known as Majorca) was officially inaugurated. Mallorca is the largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, an archipelago in the western region of the Mediterranean Sea. The Mallorcan city of Palma is the capital of those islands, which... Continue Reading →
April 2, 1939 An airport serving Ribeirão Preto, a municipality in southeastern Brazil’s state of São Paulo, was opened. In 1956, this airport was officially named in honor of Brazilian scientist Leite Lopes (1918-2006). Lopes gained renown for his work in quantum field theory and particle physics. In the course of his long and productive... Continue Reading →
March 26, 1931 Swissair, which would become Switzerland’s national airline, was officially established. This airline was formed from a merger between two other Swiss airlines -- Ad Astra Aero (dating back to 1919) and Balair (founded in 1925). One of Swissair’s founders was renowned aviation pioneer Walter Mittelholzer (1894-1937), whose key airborne accomplishments included making the... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer and Olympic athlete Iris Cummings, who is also known by married name Iris Critchell, was on December 21, 1920, in Los Angeles. She attended the 1932 Summer Olympics in that city and shortly thereafter began swimming competitively. Cummings went on to win a large number of local and regional tournaments in this sport.... Continue Reading →
In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African American to fly into space when he went into orbit on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. The first African American astronaut was actually Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. He never had the opportunity to travel into space, however; in 1967 -- just a few months after being selected... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 