PORTLAND, Ore. — TriMet is honoring civil rights activist Rosa
Parks on Friday, February 4 on what would have been her 109th
birthday.

Officials said no fares will be collected for bus, MAX, WES or LIFT.

Portland Streetcar and C-TRAN will also provide free rides as an
annual tribute to Rosa Parks.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)

Suez Canal inauguration oil Painting with Ottoman Turkish, Egyptian and French Flags.

The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red seas,
was inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French
Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. 

In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build
a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of Suez. An international team
of engineers drew up a construction plan, and in 1856 the Suez
Canal Company was formed and granted the right to operate the
canal for 99 years after completion of the work.

Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was done by
hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced laborers. Later,
European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived.

Rare actual photo of the Suez Canal November 16, 1869

On September 10, 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named
George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk
driving after slamming his cab into a building. He later pleaded
guilty and was fined 25 shillings.

In the United States, the first laws against operating a motor
vehicle while under the influence of alcohol went into effect 
in New York in 1910.

On the morning of July 31, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa, one of the most
influential American labor leaders of the 20th century, was officially
reported missing after he failed to return home the previous night. 

Though he is popularly believed to have been the victim of a Mafia hit,
conclusive evidence was never found and Hoffa’s fate remains a mystery.

Postcard photo of the Southern Pacific’s “Sunset Limited” train as it traveled between Los Angeles and San Francisco, c. 1910s.

The Southern Pacific Railroad completed its transcontinental “Sunset Route”
from New Orleans to California, consolidating its dominance over rail traffic
to the Pacific.

One of the most powerful railroad companies of the 19th century, the “Espee”
(as the railroad was often called) originated in an ambitious plan conceived in
1870 by the “Big Four” western railroad barons: Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins. A year earlier, the Big Four’s
western-based Central Pacific had linked up with the eastern-based Union
Pacific in Utah, creating the first transcontinental American railway. With
that finished, the “Big Four” began to look for ways to increase their control
over West Coast shipping, and decided to focus their efforts on extending
the California-based Southern Pacific southward.

Early 20th-century postcard of the “Sunset Express” train passing
through Yuma, Arizona.