Man's first known attempt at flight dates back to 1020 when Oliver of Malmesbury, an English Benedictine monk, strapped a huge pair of wings to his body and endeavoured to soar into the air from Malmesbury Abbey. He fell and broke both legs. [ Transportation | Firsts ] (source)
The first bridge made out of iron had a span of only 100 feet. It spanned the Severn River and was completed in 1779.
The world's first fatal railway accident was on June 17th, 1831, when the boiler exploded on America's first passenger locomotive and the first American locomotive in regular revenue service, The Best Friend of Charleston, killing the fireman. [ Transportation | Firsts ]
The word "jumbo" comes from the name of Jumbo the circus elephant. Jumbo was killed on September 15, 1885, after being hit by a locomotive in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. In 1985, a life-size (3.35 metres tall) plaster statue of Jumbo was unveiled in St. Thomas. It was sculpted in New Brunswick and, ironically, was transported to St. Thomas entirely by truck. [ Transportation | Animals ] (source)
In June 1872, the steamship Iron Mountain, with a line of barges in tow, left from Vicksburg, Pennsylvania, heading towards Pittsburgh. It was never seen again. Late on the morning it left, the crew of another steamship spotted the line of barges. The tow line had been cut, indicating that the crew of Iron Mountain had sensed a problem. However, there were no traces of the steamship, its crew, or its cargo, which should have dotted the river for miles had the steamer sank. (source)
From 1836 to 1895, the Red Flag Act in England required that any self-propelled vehicle be preceded by a man carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. In effect, this limited the speed of such vehicles to that of a person and retarded development of all self-propelled vehicles, including automobiles. [ Transportation | Laws and Customs ]
In 1898, fourteen years before the Titanic sailed in April 1912 on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, Morgan Robertson's novel Futility was published. It was about an unsinkable and glamourous Atlantic liner, the largest in the world. Like the Titanic, the fictional vessel was triple-screw and could make 24-25 knots; at 800 feet it was a little shorter than the Titanic, but at 75,000 tons its displacement was 9,000 tons greater . Like the Titanic's, its passenger list consisted of many of the top names in high society, and there were insufficient lifeboats (24 on the Titan, 20 on the Titanic). On a cold April night, the fictional "unsinkable" vessel strikes an iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of this liner was the Titan. (source)
In the entire state of Ohio in 1895, there were only two cars on the road, and the drivers of these two cars crashed into each other. (source)
In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (popularly known as "Galloping Gertie"), which spanned the Puget Sound south of Seattle, opened. At the time it was the third longest bridge in the world and narrower than any comparably-sized bridges. Although the bridge was criticized for being too slender, Leon Moisseiff, the consulting engineer to the project and an expert on suspension bridges, assured people that the bridge would be safe. However, only three months after it opened, the bridge collapsed in a 42 mph wind after going into harmonic oscillation. [ Physics | Transportation ] (source)
One of the deadliest train disasters ever was not caused by a collision, derailment, bridge collapse, or fire. On the night of March 2nd, 1944, Italian freight train number 8017 left Salerno, headed south through the Appenine mountains. Over 650 people had stolen a ride on the 47-car train, intending to barter cigarettes and other items with farmers in exchange for milk, eggs, and other rationed foods. The train passed through Balvano, which lies between two tunnels. In the first tunnel, the train waited nearly an hour for a downhill train with locomotive trouble. In the second, the mile-long Galleria delle Armi, the overloaded train stalled fighting the steep grade, leaving all but the last three cars trapped inside the tunnel. The tunnels trapped the carbon monoxide produced by the locomotives burning their low-grade coal, causing 526 people to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. (source)
After World War II, England was offered the Volkswagen business as part of reparations, but declined, believing that cars with engines at the back had no future. British occupation authorities, however, placed an order for 20,000 of the "beetles" to help put the VW company back on its feet. By 1959, the company was producing nearly 4,000 cars every day.
During the building of the Central Pacific part of the American transcontinental railway over the Sierra Mountains, three locomotives and forty railway cars were dismantled and hauled over the mountains on sledges and logs.
The most disastrous aeroplane crash in history occurred on the ground, when two 747 jumbo jets collided in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, on March 27, 1977. A KLM plane accelerating on a runway during takeoff ran into a Pan Am plane that was taxiing between holding areas, waiting its turn to fly, causing 583 people to be killed. (source)
One of the earliest monorails was the Listowel & Ballybunion Railway, which spanned nine miles in County Kerry, Ireland. It ran between 1888 and 1924. Its twin-boilered locomotives and cars straddled the rail, which was supported on trestles. All loads had to be balanced. Once, when a piano was shipped it was balanced by putting a cow on the other side of the car. The cow was shipped back with two calves on the other half of the car to balance it, and the calves were returned one on each side of the car.
In 1920, a Detroit policeman named William L. Potts worked out an electric light system that allowed him to control three street intersections from one tower. He picked the colours red, yellow, and green because railways used them. These were the first street traffic lights.
The world's largest building without internal supports is the Goodyear Airship hangar, in Akron, Ohio - it has 55 million cubic feet of air. Clouds form in the top of the structure during sudden temperature changes, and it rains. [ Transportation | Buildings and Monuments ]
Kenya Railways requires that all trains stop for several minutes before crossing the Mwatate Dam in the southern part of the country. The practice was adopted on the advice of local residents after several mysterious derailments on the dam were blamed on the evil spirits that inhabit the reservoir. Townsfolk claimed that the spirits were angered when the trains moved across the dam without first appeasing them by stopping in tribute.
In America, rail passenger traffic peaked in 1921 and volume has been declining more or less steadily since then.
The average American spends 18% of his or her income on transportation, and only 13% on food. [ Statistics | Food and Drink | Transportation ]
On August 29, 1929 the Graf Zeppelin, a rigid airship (or dirigible), completed a historic flight around the world that included a nonstop leg from Friedrichshafen, Germany to Tokyo, Japan -- a distance of almost 7,000 miles. The airship was 100 feet in diameter and 110 feet high, including the gondola bumpers. During its operating life from 1928 to 1937, the Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights, covering more than a million miles. A total of 13,100 passengers were carried without a single injury. (source)
On August 25, 1932 Amelia Earhart set three records for women flyers: the first non-stop U.S. crossing, the longest distance record, and a coast-to-coast record time. (source)
Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first successful flight on December 17, 1903. Wilbur and Orville had two older brothers and a younger sister. None of the Wright children were given a middle name. (source)
The Wright brothers' first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a B-52 bomber. (source)
After the first powered Wright Flyer of 1903 made history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers disassembled it and shipped it to Dayton, Ohio, where it was stored in a shed behind their bicycle shop for more than a decade. In March 1913, Dayton was hit by a serious flood, and the boxes containing the Flyer were submerged in water and mud for 11 days. In the summer of 1916 Orville repaired and reassembled the airplane for brief exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (source)
The Wright 1905 Flyer, the first practical airplane, flew for 33 minutes and 17 seconds, covering a distance of 20 miles, on October 4, 1905. (source)
On Feb. 20, 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He made three Earth revolutions in his capsule named "Friendship 7." (source)
A manned rocket reaches the Moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England. (source)