Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
February 4, 1825 The Ohio state legislature voted to approve construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal, a waterway that would ultimately span 308 miles (496 kilometers) and connect Lake Erie at what was originally the village of Cleveland with the Ohio River at Portsmouth in the south-central region of the Buckeye State. The legislature actually... Continue Reading →
January 31, 1901 In the northern part of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, operations began for the current version of a lighthouse at Brant Point on the south side of the island’s harbor. (Nantucket is approximately 30 miles [48 kilometers] south of the Bay State’s Cape Code peninsula.) The New York Times provided details about... Continue Reading →
December 26, 1859 At eleven o’clock on a Monday morning, the pilot boat John D. Jones, No. 15, was launched into a section of the East River within the ward of Williamsburg in the city of Brooklyn (now one of New York City’s five boroughs). J.D. Jones had been built by J.B & J.D. Van... Continue Reading →
December 20, 1920 Linton Hope, who earned widespread fame for his contributions to yacht and aircraft design, died in the market town and civil parish of Midhurst in southeastern England. He was 57. Hope had been born April 18, 1863, in northwestern England’s market town and civil parish of Macclesfield as Linton Chorley Hopps. He... Continue Reading →
December 13, 1963 The Murchison Highway on the Australian island state of Tasmania was officially opened. This highway, which is located on Tasmania’s West Coast, covers a total of 91 miles (147 kilometers) between the township of Somerset in the north and the town of Zeehan in the south. The inauguration of the Murchison Highway... Continue Reading →
December 10, 2009 A cable-stayed swing bridge in Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland, was formally opened to pedestrians. Emer Costello (born in 1962), the lord mayor of Dublin, officiated at these inaugural festivities. The bridge was first opened to motor vehicle traffic the next morning. This 403.5-foot (123-meter)-long structure crosses the... Continue Reading →
December 2, 1594 Gerardus Mercator, whose influential work in cartography included a seminal 1569 map that depicted sailing courses worldwide, died at the age of 82 in the city of Duisburg in present-day Germany. He had been born on March 5, 1512, in the town of Rupelmonde in what is now Belgium. Mercator established a niche... Continue Reading →
Charles Robinson, who had a longtime career with life-saving stations in his home state of Michigan, was born on May 5, 1874, in the city of Grand Haven on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and in the west-central section of the Wolverine State’s Lower Peninsula. Robinson was partly of Odawa ancestry. The Odawa --... Continue Reading →
David Moses Bridges was a member of the federally recognized Passamaquoddy Tribe on the Passamaquoddy Pleasant Point Reservation in the eastern part of Maine. The Passamaquoddy people constitute one of the Eastern Algonquian nations that form the Wabanaki Confederacy, which encompasses various tribes within both the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Bridges was born... Continue Reading →
November 14, 1874 Operations began for a lighthouse in a section of the Hudson River within New York’s southeastern region. This navigational aid, which was constructed to help guide vessels safely around a treacherous part of the river known as the Middle Ground Flats, is specifically located between the cities of Hudson and Athens. As... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 