Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In present-day Poland, a new railway station was opened in the city of Kraków. (At the time, the city had recently become part of a section of the Austrian Empire known as the Grand Duchy of Kraków.) On the same day of the station’s formal debut, the first train to operate at the facility departed... Continue Reading →
In 2006, Ronald J. Rábago was promoted to rear admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG); this made him the first person of Hispanic American descent to attain flag rank in that military branch. (A flag officer is a commissioned officer who is senior enough to be entitled to fly a flag to mark the... Continue Reading →
Automotive entrepreneur August Horch was born in the municipality of Winningen in the Kingdom of Prussia (now part of Germany). After graduating from Mittweida Technical College with a degree in engineering, Horch pursued a career in shipbuilding before shifting his focus to another mode of transportation. In 1896, he began working for automobile pioneer Karl... Continue Reading →
Image: Roberto Sánchez Vilella (right) seen here with David Ben-Gurion, former prime minister of Israel, circa 1958. Roberto Sánchez Vilella made a number of notable contributions to Puerto Rico’s transportation infrastructure. He was born in 1913 in the municipality of Mäyaguez on the western coast of Puerto Rico. Vilella and his family moved to the... Continue Reading →
The rebuilt Mária Valéria Bridge, which spans the River Danube between the Slovak Republic (formed after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993) and Hungary, was officially opened to the public. This structure measures approximately 1,640 feet (500m) in length and connects the Slovak town of Štúrovo with the Hungarian city of Esztergom. The bridge was... Continue Reading →
Domingo Marcucci (1827-1905), who started out life in the part of the South American republic of Gran Colombia that now encompasses Venezuela, became a leading trailblazer for maritime activities in the United States. “Captain [Domingo] Marcucci is the pioneer boatbuilder of the Pacific Coast and the first to establish a shipyard in San Francisco,” asserted... Continue Reading →
Image: Turning the first turf for the Sydney Railway, 1850. Lithograph by W. Harris. State Library of NSW collection. In Australia, a company to build one of the first public railway lines in the colony (now state) of New South Wales (NSW) was incorporated. The Sydney Railway Company was put into place to develop a... Continue Reading →
Entrepreneur and politician Miguel Antonio Otero (1829-1882), who had been born in present-day New Mexico when it was still a Mexican province, was a strong supporter of railroads in that part of the world. While serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for the New Mexico Territory’s at-large district from 1856 to 1861, he steadfastly... Continue Reading →
The first line of a new subway system in the South Korean city of Incheon began operations after six years of construction. The initial section of the north-south Incheon Subway Line 1 covered approximately 12 miles between the Bakchon and Dongmak stations. Incheon Subway Line 1, which is also included as part of the Seoul... Continue Reading →
Sometime around 1824, Juan Andreu of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard) was appointed keeper of the St. Augustine Lighthouse on northeast Florida’s Atlantic coast. (The future state had become a U.S. territory in 1821.) Andreu, whose parents had been born in on the island of Minorca (off the eastern... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 