Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
July 28, 1874 In northern Scotland, a railway station in the town and royal burgh of Wick in the Scottish Highlands was opened. This station was designed by the prolific engineer and architect Murdoch Paterson (1826-1898) and constructed by the Sutherland and Caithness Railway, which operated in that region of Scotland from 1874 to 1884.... Continue Reading →
US Route 66 (US 66), known far and wide today as simply Route 66, was one of the original routes of the United States Numbered Highway System to be approved by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in 1926 and formally authorized and announced by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads early the... Continue Reading →
July 17, 2006 A light rail system serving Newark, New Jersey, and surrounding communities was inaugurated. The Newark Light Rail (NLR) is owned and operated by NJ Transit Bus Operations, a division of the state-owned New Jersey Transit Corporation. NLR was developed from a combination of Newark City Subway, which had been launched in 1935,... Continue Reading →
July 15, 2013 The final section of the Trakia motorway in the Republic of Bulgaria was opened to traffic. Trakia (pronounced TRAH-kee-yah) is the Bulgarian version of “Thrace,” a historical region in southeastern Europe that encompassed part of what is now Bulgaria. The Trakia motorway, which is officially designated A1, has a total length of... Continue Reading →
July 13, 2005 The Millennium Bridge in Podgorica, the capital and largest city of southeastern Europe’s country of Montenegro, was officially opened to traffic. The inauguration of this cable-stayed bridge, which crosses the Morača river, took place on Montenegro’s National Day. It was on that date in 1878 that representatives on behalf of the major... Continue Reading →
July 10, 1854 A newly completed railway station was opened in the village (now suburban town) of Dalkey, which is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of central Dublin. At that time, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; this sovereign state remained in existence until... Continue Reading →
July 1, 1977 The Blue Line of the Washington Metro first went into service. This line’s inaugural stretch between National Airport station in Arlington County, Virginia, and Stadium-Armory station in southeast Washington, D.C., joined the Red Line (introduced the previous year) in forming what was then the world’s newest major rapid transit system. The Orange... Continue Reading →
June 30, 2023 On Hawaii’s island of Oʻahu, Kualakaʻi station in the community of East Kapolei first went into service. This station was one of nine that were officially opened on the same date. These stations constituted the inaugural segment of Skyline, a light metro rapid transit system that is managed by the Honolulu Department... Continue Reading →
June 29, 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) ushered in the Era of the Interstate System by signing into law the landmark Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. At the time, he was at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, recuperating from major intestinal surgery that had been performed 20 days earlier. To say that June... Continue Reading →
June 26, 2004 Just northwest of downtown Minneapolis, operations began for a light rail station built in the city’s Warehouse District – a longtime neighborhood – on 5th Street North (between 1st Avenue North and Hennepin Avenue). The Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station was constructed as part of the first segment of the Blue Line of... Continue Reading →
