Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
October 24, 1856 In the northern part of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula region, Mark Petty arrived at Rock Harbor at Isle Royale to serve as the first keeper of a newly completed lighthouse there. He was accompanied by his brother Michael, who would serve as Rock Harbor Lighthouse’s first assistant keeper. This lighthouse... Continue Reading →
December 11, 1866 In Denmark, the shipping business DFDS was established as a merger of that nation’s three largest steamship companies. Those three companies were brought together as a single entity under the leadership of renowned industrialist and financier Carl Frederik Tietgen (1829-1901), who played a key role in the economic growth and prosperity of Denmark... Continue Reading →
July 7, 2012 Berth 6, a key addition to the Port of Manila, was fully opened for commercial operations. The Port of Manila is the collective term for various terminals and other infrastructure located in the Port Area and Tondo districts of the Philippines’ capital city of Manila. The Port of Manila is the largest... Continue Reading →
February 3, 1862 The first railway line in New Zealand was opened with considerable fanfare. (At the time, New Zealand was a British colony; it gained semi-independent status as a dominion of the British Empire in 1907 and achieved full autonomy in 1947.) Horse-drawn train cars were used for this 13.4-mile (21.5-kilometer)-long privately owned and... Continue Reading →
Maritime transportation entrepreneur Thea Foss was born in the hamlet of Eidsberg in Norway in 1857. She immigrated to the United States in the early 1880s. Not long after arriving in her new homeland, she married fellow Norwegian immigrant Andreas Oleson in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The couple subsequently changed their last name to Fossen to distinguish themselves... Continue Reading →
September 4, 1783 Frederic Tudor, a businessman who became known as the “Ice King” for creatively transporting ice to various regions of the globe from his native New England, was born in Boston. Long before the advent of electric refrigerators, Tudor came up with the idea of harvesting block ice from frozen freshwater lakes and... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 