The Department of Transportation is considering cell phone software that would prevent the devices from working in moving vehicles, as “distracted driving” laws have proven ineffective. – U.S. Department of Transportation officials are considering software solutions that would prevent cell phones from working in moving vehicles, Secretary of Transportation Raymond LaHood said at a talk this month, according to Discovery News.
The comment followed the launch of the departments “Fa…
1884: Geographers and astronomers adopt Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, the international standard for zero degrees longitude.
The late 19th century was an era of standardization. With the Second Industrial Revolution stimulating world trade, the Treaty of the Meter established the International System of weights and measures in 1875. With railroads linking together entire continents, nations [...]
Karmjit Singh has been appointed independent non-ED wef Oct 1
Work experience: President, SIA Group Sports Club; chairman, Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport Singapore
1931: More than 41 hours after departing Japan, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. perform a controlled crash landing near Wenatchee, Washington. After the dust settles, they emerge from the airplane to complete the first-ever nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean.
Pangborn had served as a flight instructor during World War I, and then followed the [...]
1958: Two DeHavilland Comets depart London and New York, each bound for the other city. Flying for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, the two aircraft complete the first trans-Atlantic jet passenger service, dramatically reducing the travel time between the United States and Europe.
Jet airliners had been around since the Comet first carried passengers from London [...]
1950: The BBC airs the first live, in-flight TV broadcast, from a specially outfitted plane flying over London. It is not free of glitches, but once TV stations are introduced to the concept of air supremacy, news coverage will never be the same.
Live TV from an aircraft was bound to happen — this wasn’t a [...]
1960: USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched in Newport News, Virginia. CVN-65, nicknamed Big E, was the first carrier of its kind, powered solely by its eight nuclear reactors.
With nuclear power to propel it, the Enterprise does not need to carry its own fuel oil and has more room for aircraft and [...]
1908: During flight trials to win a contract from the U.S. Signal Army Corps, pilot Orville Wright and passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge crash in a Wright Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia. Wright is injured, and Selfridge becomes the first passenger to die in an airplane accident.
After Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic first-ever airplane [...]
1948: A mile-long stretch of Exchange Street in Akron, Ohio, is the first in the United States to be paved with a rubber-asphalt compound.
Rubber was everywhere in postwar Akron. As the home of B.F. Goodrich, Goodyear, Firestone and General Tire, Akron called itself the “Rubber Capital of the World,” and the fortunes of the city [...]
1974: On a flight to the Farnborough Air Show outside London, Maj. James Sullivan and Maj. Noel Widdifield fly the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird from New York to London in 1 hour, 54 minutes, 56.4 seconds. The 1,806-mph flight still holds the transatlantic speed record between the two cities.
Developed during the middle of the cold war, [...]
1977: Bryan Allen completes a figure-eight course piloting and powering the Gossamer Condor to claim the Kremer Prize for human-powered flight.
In 1959, British industrialist Henry Kremer created a prize for a successful human-powered aircraft. The criteria were fairly simple in concept, but would turn out to be very difficult to execute.
In order to win the [...]
1859: Mail is carried by air for the first time in the United States.
On a hot summer day as the temperature soared toward 91 degrees, John Wise stood at the town square in Lafayette, Indiana, waiting next to a balloon named Jupiter. Even for a balloon enthusiast and a well-known aeronaut, it was a big [...]
1888: Berta Benz, wife of inventor Karl Benz, takes her husband’s car on the first documented road trip in an automobile.
The trip would also include the first road repairs, the first automotive marketing stunt, the first case of a wife borrowing her husband’s car without asking, and the first violation of intercity highway laws [...]
1978: Three Americans take off in a balloon from Presque Isle, Maine. They will land in a field north of Paris 137 hours, 6 minutes later, the first people to cross the Atlantic in a balloon.
After Lindbergh’s famous 1927 flight, crossing the Atlantic in a balloon remained one of the last great unconquered aviation challenges. [...]
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Los Angeles suffered its first big smog attack 67 years ago Monday. This selection of photographs from the vast collection of the UCLA Library gives you a glimpse — often hazy, sometimes wacky — of Southern California’s struggle against smog from the 1940s through the 1960s.
See also:
This Day [...]
1943: In the middle of World War II, Los Angeles residents believe the Japanese are attacking them with chemical warfare. A thick fog that makes people’s eyes sting and their noses run has taken hold of the city. Visibility is cut down to three city blocks.
See also:
Photo Gallery
Attack of the L.A. Smog Archives
As residents would [...]
1989: A catastrophic hydraulic-system failure forces a plane to make an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa. The right wing catches on the tarmac, sending the plane careening down the runway in a ball of flame and twisting wreckage. But thanks to the skill of the flight team, the rescue personnel on the ground and [...]
