Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
December 18, 1997 The M65 motorway in northwestern England’s ceremonial county of Lancashire was officially completed with the opening of the final segment of that route. This segment encompasses Junctions 1a to 6 within the area between Whitebirk, a suburb in the vicinity of the borough of Blackburn with Darwen; and this motorway’s linkage with... Continue Reading →
December 16, 1953 At the Delaware Water Gap – a section where the Delaware River slices through a major ridge of the Appalachian Mountains – a toll bridge connecting New Jersey with Pennsylvania was formally opened to traffic. New Jersey Governor Alfred E. Driscoll (1947-1954) was among the public officials on hand for the Wednesday... Continue Reading →
December 15, 1950 New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal -- owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- made its formal debut. The new facility, which the New York Times proclaimed to be “as revolutionary as it is large,” was constructed to consolidate all of the private bus... Continue Reading →
December 11, 1976 On a Saturday morning, a ferry terminal in the city of Larkspur (located north of San Francisco) was opened with considerable fanfare. Larkspur Landing, which is also called Larkspur Ferry Terminal, provides commuter ferry services to downtown San Francisco via the North Bay. This terminal is operated by the Golden Gate Bridge,... Continue Reading →
December 9, 2005 The Sunniberg Bridge near eastern Switzerland’s Alpine village of Klosters was officially opened to vehicular traffic nine years after its completion. (“Sunniberg” means “sunny mountain” in German.) This curved multi-span extradosed bridge – a structure that blends the main components of both a cable-stayed bridge and a prestressed box girder bridge –... Continue Reading →
December 8, 1890 Chicago’s Grand Central Station was opened. This passenger railroad terminal, which had been designed by architect Solon Spencer Beman (1853-1914) and completed by the Chicago and Northern Pacific Railroad, was specifically located downtown at 201 Harrison Street (bounded by Harrison, Wells, and Polk Streets as well as the Chicago River). On the day... Continue Reading →
December 3, 1995 In Australia’s state of New South Wales (NSW), a cable-stayed bridge in Sydney was formally opened to traffic. This bridge, crossing Johnstons Bay on the western edge of the city’s central business district, is a major link between the suburb of Pyrmont and the port facility of Glebe Island within the suburb... 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 →
December 1, 1982 Nearly nine decades after it was opened, a railway station in the town of Brevik in southeastern Norway was closed. (That town has officially been part of the municipality of Porsgrunn since 1964.) The station was built as part of the Brevik Line, a 6.2-mile (10-kilometer) railway in that region of Norway.... Continue Reading →
November 26, 1924 The Bear Mountain Bridge in southeastern New York was officially dedicated. This suspension bridge crosses the section of the Hudson River between Bear Mountain Park in Orange County and the town of Cortlandt in Westchester County. At the time of its debut, this structure was the world’s longest suspension bridge -- a... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 