On January 5, 1933, construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge,
as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s
huge anchorages.
Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators
realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in
value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city. Soon, a
plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden
Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of
the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula
with the southern end of Marin County.
Construction underway on a pylon on the south shore of the Golden
Gate Bridge project.
Members of the Halfway to Hell Club bridge construction crew
became celebrities in the Bay Area.
Fact: The US Navy originally planned to paint the bridge with black and yellow stripes to ensure visibility for passing ships.
On this day in 1962, the Soviet Union exchanged captured American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (seated) for the Soviet KGB spy Rudolph Ivanovich Abel (right) being held by the U.S.
Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.
Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city. Soon, a plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.
Although the idea went back as far as 1869, the proposal took root in 1916. A former engineering student, James Wilkins, working as a journalist with the San Francisco Bulletin, called for a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet, nearly twice the length of any in existence. Wilkins’ idea was estimated to cost an astounding $100 million. So, San Francisco’s city engineer, Michael M. O’Shaughnessy (he’s also credited with coming up with the name Golden Gate Bridge), began asking bridge engineers whether they could do it for less.
Engineer and poet Joseph Strauss, a 5-foot tall Cincinnati-born Chicagoan, said he could.
Eventually, O’Shaughnessy and Strauss concluded they could build a pure suspension bridge within a practical range of $25-30 million with a main span at least 4,000 feet. The construction plan still faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. By the time most of the obstacles were cleared, the Great Depression of 1929 had begun, limiting financing options, so officials convinced voters to support $35 million in bonded indebtedness, citing the jobs that would be created for the project. However, the bonds couldn’t be sold until 1932, when San-Francisco based Bank of America agreed to buy the entire project in order to help the local economy.
On this day in 1940, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a 42 mph windstorm. The suspension bridge had opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. The collapse had lasting effects on science and engineering.
William Franklin Graham Jr.(November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018)
Billy Graham was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well-known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan revolutionized folk music in the 1960’s with albums such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde and songs such as "The Times They Are a-Changin’," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "Positively 4th Street."
Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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