Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
August 5, 1914 What are widely regarded as the world’s first electric traffic lights made their debut at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Alfred A. Benesch (1879-1973), the city’s director of public safety, placed the lights in operation at 5:00 p.m. Those also on hand for that launch included other... Continue Reading →
July 19, 1869 Masonry construction was completed on a new lighthouse in the Celtic Sea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. This took place nearly five years after William Douglass, the engineer supervising the project, laid the first stone of the structure. This lighthouse is located on a rock that is 18 nautical miles... Continue Reading →
July 10, 1908 The Thamshavn Line, Norway’s first electric railway, made its debut. The initial segment of this trailblazing line was formally opened by Norway’s King Haakon VII (1872-1957). This railway was built to carry ore from the mines at the village of Løkken Verk in central Norway to the ports of Orkanger and Thamshavn... Continue Reading →
May 28, 1818 A pioneering sidewheel steamboat known as Walk-in-the-Water was launched at Black Rock, New York. (An independent community at that time, Black Rock is now part of Buffalo.) Walk-in-the-Water became the first steam-powered vessel to sail on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan. An engineer named Noah Brown designed Walk-in-the-Water. Robert McQueen was the... Continue Reading →
May 20, 1946 Jacob Ellehammer, a longtime watchmaker who also used his mechanical talents to make seminal contributions to transportation, died in Denmark’s capital city of Copenhagen. He was 74. Ellehammer was born in the Danish village of Bakkebølle on June 14, 1871. After completing his apprenticeship as a watchmaker, he moved to Copenhagen and... Continue Reading →
May 16, 1929 The first-ever “Best Picture” Oscar went to a movie about planes. Wings, which was also the only silent movie to win that award, told the story of two men who are in love with the same woman and end up becoming fighter pilots in World War I. The actors who played these men... Continue Reading →
Shailen P. Bhatt was officially sworn in by Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, on January 13, 2023, to serve as head of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This inaugural ceremony made Bhatt the 21st administrator of FHWA and the first person of Indian descent to step into that leadership position. The previous month, Bhatt... Continue Reading →
May 13, 1968 The U.S. Navy survey ship USNS Chauvenet (T-AGS-29) was launched in the Scottish port city of Glasgow. (“USNS” stands for “U.S. Navy Ship”; this designation is used for non-commissioned ships that, while owned by the U.S. Navy, are largely operated and crewed by the Military Sealift Command [MSC] or other civilian-staffed naval... Continue Reading →
May 9, 1932 Albert Francis Hegenberger (1895-1983), an aviation pioneer and U.S. Army Air Corps captain, became the world’s first person to make a “blind” instrument-only flight from takeoff to landing without any co-pilot on board with him. This flight took place in the skies above Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Hegenberger had developed that blind... Continue Reading →
On April 19, 2021, the autonomous NASA helicopter Ingenuity (nicknamed Ginny) lifted off the surface of Mars for what turned out to be a flight of 39.1 seconds. While decidedly brief, this ascent was also historic because it made Ingenuity the first aircraft to carry out a powered, controlled extra-terrestrial flight. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 