Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
One of New Zealand’s best-known bridges was made its official debut on the North Island. The Auckland Harbour Bridge, which was completed three weeks ahead of schedule, spans Auckland Harbour (formally called Waitematā Harbour) and connects the Auckland suburbs of Saint Marys Bay and Northcote. Lord Cobham (Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham), New Zealand’s... Continue Reading →
Rose Lok achieved nationwide fame as a Chinese-American aviation pioneer during the 1930s. Lok, who was born in China in 1912, immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. They settled in a home on Tyler Street in Boston. By the time she was 20, Lok had developed a strong interest in... Continue Reading →
Pioneering canal engineer Engebret Soot was born in the municipality of Aurskog (now part of Aurskog-Høland) in southeastern Norway. At the time of Soot’s birth, the Kingdom of Norway was united with the Kingdom of Denmark as a state known as Denmark-Norway; this integrated state remained in existence until 1814, when Norway established itself as... Continue Reading →
Jon Sanders set sail from the port city of Fremantle in the state of Western Australia for a planned record-setting series of voyages across the globe on board his 44-foot yacht Parry Endeavour. Sanders, who was born in Western Australia’s capital city of Perth in 1939, aspired to circumnavigate the world a total of three... Continue Reading →
Chinese-American structural engineer Tung-Yen Lin left a formidable legacy when it came to transportation projects across the globe. “He was an extraordinarily creative engineer,” said Karl S. Pister, a former dean of engineering at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, who knew Lin for more than a half-century. Lin was born in 1912 in the... Continue Reading →
A hugely successful airborne humanitarian mission in Ethiopia resulted in the establishment of a new and still-intact flight record. Operation Solomon was an Israeli military effort to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel within a tight timeframe. At the time, Ethiopia was in grave danger of political destabilization as the government of Mengistu Aile... Continue Reading →
Sudhir K. Gupta is an Indian-American business executive who made key contributions to transportation during his long career. Gupta graduated with a B.S. degree in marine engineering from the Marine Engineering College in India in 1972 and with a B.S.E. degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan in 1981. He... Continue Reading →
Anatole Mallet, who became a consequential if initially underappreciated engineer and inventor, was born near Geneva, Switzerland. When he was very young, he and his family moved to France. Mallet’s longtime engineering career included helping to build the Suez Canal during the 1860s. His most significant contribution, however, was in the world of railroads. By... Continue Reading →
A fuzzy, many-generations-old photo of Shigeru Serikaku in front of his plane is one of the few images remaining of the adventurous issei from Sashiki, Okinawa. (Courtesy of the Serikaku family, via The Hawaii Herald) As a 13-year-old boy growing up on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Shigeru Serikaku (1890-1971) learned about how the Wright... Continue Reading →
During the summer of 1992, Eugene Huu-Chau Trinh became the first Vietnamese-American to travel to outer space when he flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist on mission STS-50. This mission lasted from June 25 to July 9 of that year. Trinh was born in 1950 in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City)... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 