Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
April 17, 1962 A dedication ceremony took place for an airport in the vicinity of Bhubaneswar, the capital city of eastern India’s state of Odisha. This airport was specifically dedicated to the people of Odisha, and it had the distinction of being the first commercial airport in the state. The airport is named after Biju... Continue Reading →
April 7, 1947 Ellis Dexter Atwood (1889-1950) completed construction on the Edaville Railroad on his 1,800-acre (278.4-hectare) cranberry farm in the Massachusetts village of South Carver on the inland end of Cape Cod. (The “EDA” in “Edaville” came from his initials.) That two-foot (0.6-meter) narrow gauge line is widely considered to be the world’s first tourist... Continue Reading →
April 3, 2011 On the South Side of Chicago, operations began for a passenger train station built on 35th Street in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood. This station is part of the Metra commuter rail system’s Rock Island District line. The station was officially named not only for the street and neighborhood where it is located... Continue Reading →
March 26, 2025 In Utah’s Salt Lake County, a light rail station in the community of Daybreak was officially opened. Daybreak is part of the city of South Jordan. This city is one of many within the Wasatch Front, the name of the metropolitan region in the north-central section of the Beehive State. South Jordan... Continue Reading →
March 25, 1940 An open house for the public was held for a recently completed Greyhound bus terminal at 1100 New York Avenue in northwest Washington, D.C. This open house, which was formally classified as a public preview, took place between 4:00 and 9:00 p.m. on the day before the actual start of bus operations... Continue Reading →
March 20, 1956 Only four days after his 76th birthday, inventor and engineer William Bushnell Stout died of a heart attack at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Stout, who made significant innovations in the aviation and automotive fields, had been born in 1880 in Quincy, Illinois. After graduating from the Mechanic Arts High School in... Continue Reading →
Margaret A. Wilcox, who was born in Chicago in 1838, became a prolific mechanical engineer and inventor at a time when very few women -- due to prevailing social conventions -- played any meaningful role at all in these professions. She developed a strong interest in mechanical engineering early in life and would use her... Continue Reading →
March 10, 1906 SS Viper was launched at the shipyard of Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company (widely known as Fairfields) in the Scottish burgh of Govan. (Six years later, Govan was annexed as part of the city of Glasgow.) This steel, triple-screw, turbine-driven was built at Govan by Fairfields for use by the maritime transportation... Continue Reading →
March 6, 1995 Operations began for a newly built rail station in the city of San Clemente on the coast of Orange County, California. This station is served by both the Orange County Line and Inland Empire-Orange County Line of southern California’s commuter trains network Metrolink. San Clemente station is specifically located in the North... Continue Reading →
March 4, 1937 After five weeks of crew training at a depot in the Scottish city of Glasgow, the prototype of the Class K4 locomotive of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) made its public debut as a self-propelled vehicle for passenger trains. This prototype constituted what became a new class of 2-6-0 steam... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 