Clackline Bridge is a road bridge in Clackline, Western Australia, 77 kilometres (48 mi) east of Perth, that carried Great Eastern Highway until 2008. It is the only bridge in Western Australia to have spanned both a waterway and railway, the Clackline Brook and the former Eastern Railway alignment. The mainly timber bridge has a unique curved and sloped design, due to the difficult topography and the route of the former railway. The bridge was designed in 1934 to replace two dangerous rail crossings and a rudimentary water crossing. Construction began in January 1935, and the opening ceremony was held on 30 August 1935. The bridge was still a safety hazard, with increasing severity and numbers of accidents in the 1970s and 1980s. Planning for a highway bypass of Clackline and the Clackline Bridge began in the 1990s, and was constructed between January 2007 and February 2008. The local community had been concerned that the historic bridge would be lost, but it remains part of the local road network, and has been listed on both the Northam Municipal Heritage Inventory and the Heritage Council of Western Australia's Register of Heritage Places.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackline_Bridge
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1799:
Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland: A squadron of the navy of the Batavian Republic surrendered to the Royal Navy without a fight near Wieringen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlieter_Incident
1835:
European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yarra River in Southeastern Australia founded the city of Melbourne (Parliament House pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne
1862:
American Civil War: In separate actions, Confederate forces were victorious in both the Battle of Richmond in Kentucky and the Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Bull_Run
1918:
Fanni Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, helping to spark the Red Terror in the future Soviet Union, a repression against Socialist-Revolutionary Party members and other political opponents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror
1984:
Space Shuttle Discovery took off on its maiden voyage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Discovery
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
leech: 1. (transitive) To apply a leech medicinally, so that it sucks blood from the patient. 2. (transitive) To drain (resources) without giving back. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leech
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that. --Warren Buffett https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett