Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
June 17, 1892 Two years after construction on it began, the Brienz Rothorn Railway in central Switzerland first went into service. This line connects the municipality of Brienz with the summit of the mountain known as the Brienzer Rothorn (part of the western region of the Alps). The Brienz Rothorn Railway (“Brienz Rothorn Bahn” [BRB]... Continue Reading →
June 10, 1822 A historic “first” in maritime transportation took place when the iron steamship Aaron Manby crossed the English Channel from England to France. While there had been crossings of wooden steamships between those countries by this time, the voyage of the Aaron Manby marked the first such voyage of a steamship built of... Continue Reading →
June 8, 1945 With World War II still underway in the Pacific Theater, the ship Francis J. O’Gara was launched at the shipyard of J.A. Jones Construction Company in Panama City, Florida. This vessel was one of more than 2,700 Liberty ships built in the United States during the war. These standardized cargo vessels were... Continue Reading →
June 5, 2017 The day before it first opened for passengers on a regular basis, a newly built Amtrak train station in the city of Pontiac, Illinois, was inaugurated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and plenty of praise. Approximately 75 people attended this event. The funding for this station was a federal grant provided to the... Continue Reading →
June 4, 1910 Christopher Cockerell, who would achieve fame as the inventor of the hovercraft, was born in the city of Cambridge, England. He studied mechanical engineering at Peterhouse, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Cockerell later pursued studies in both radio and electronics at the University of Cambridge. In 1935, Cockerell began... Continue Reading →
Ken Munechika, who made notable contributions as both an aerospace engineer and U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer, was born on June 18, 1935, in Pākalā Village on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i. (At the time, Hawaii was a U.S. territory; it became the 50th state in 1959.) Munechika’s first name at birth was Kenji. As... Continue Reading →
April 27, 1922 Sheila Scott, who would break more than 100 aviation records, was born in the cathedral city of Worcester in central England. Prior to her pursuit of flying, she worked in such varied fields as nursing and acting. Scott learned how to fly in 1958. After nine months of training, she began to... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
February 26, 2021 A little over a month after being launched, the expeditionary survey boat HNLMS Hydrograaf (H8021) was commissioned into the Royal Netherlands Navy. This commissioning was carried out via video call by Barbara Visser (born in 1977), who became the Dutch government’s state secretary for defense in October 2017 and served in this... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 