Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Mary Feik, whose career encompassed a wide range of aviation achievements, was born in Cleveland. Her interest in airborne transportation first took shape when she was only seven. A stunt pilot flying a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane visited the Cleveland area at that time and took Feik for a ride in the aircraft. The experience... Continue Reading →
Image: Portraits of three women engineers: Margaret Rowbotham, Beatrice Shilling, and Margaret Partridge Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling, who left her mark as an aeronautical engineer as well as a motorbike and car racer, was born in Waterlooville, England. At age 14, she bought her first motorbike. By that time, she had also developed a strong interest... Continue Reading →
A memo to U.S. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels from Rear Admiral L.C. Palmer, chief of the Bureau of Navigation (the office within the Navy Department that handled personnel matters), helped set into motion the unprecedented enlistment of women to perform various responsibilities for that military branch – including those that involved transportation. With the ever-increasing... Continue Reading →
A pioneering railway officially began operations in the city of Liverpool in northwestern England at seven o’clock in the morning. In reporting on the first runs of the railway’s trains that day, the Liverpool Echo noted that “the carriages appear to be fairly well filled with passengers.” The Liverpool Overhead Railway, which originally spanned five... Continue Reading →
Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb, a well-established female trailblazer of the skies, was born in Norman, Oklahoma. Her father was a pilot and, with his encouragement, she developed a strong interest in aviation at an early age. By the time she was 12, Cobb was learning how to fly in her father’s 1936 Waco Aircraft Company... Continue Reading →
Photo of Ellen Paneok courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program. Aviation pioneer Ellen Evak Paneok died in Anchorage, Alaska, at the age of 48. She had been born in 1959. (Accounts vary on whether her birthplace was in Alaska or Virginia.) Her parents were Bernice Evak Burgandine, who was of Inupiat... Continue Reading →
A new lighthouse went into service at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa and the start of the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Cape Agulhas Lighthouse was the third lighthouse to be built in present-day South Africa. At the time of the lighthouse’s debut, Cape Agulhas was a part of... Continue Reading →
Alvin Drew, an African-American NASA astronaut, became the 200th person to walk in space. He conducted this spacewalk as a member of the six-person crew on STS-133, the 39th and final mission of Space Shuttle Discovery. Drew’s milestone excursion outside a spacecraft in orbit took place just a little over 16 years after fellow astronaut... Continue Reading →
A large-scale celebration was held for the opening of the new Sellwood Bridge spanning the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. The deck arch bridge, connecting Portland's Sellwood and Westmoreland neighborhoods on the east side of the river with Oregon Route 43/Macadam Avenue on the west side, replaced a bridge with the same name that had been... Continue Reading →
Robert Smalls, whose courage and sailing expertise gained freedom for himself and other slaves during the Civil War, died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina, at the age of 75. Smalls had been born into slavery in that city in 1839. When he was 12, his master sent him to Charleston to work there as... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 