The Kinzua Bridge was a railroad trestle that had spanned Kinzua Creek
in McKean County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The bridge was
301 feet (92 m) tall and 2,052 feet (625 m) long prior to its collapse.
The bridge was originally built from iron in 1882 and was billed as the
"Eighth Wonder of the World", holding the record as the tallest
railroad bridge in the world for two years. In 1900 the bridge was
dismantled and simultaneously rebuilt out of steel to allow it to
accommodate heavier trains. It stayed in commercial service until 1959
and was sold to the state government of Pennsylvania in 1963, becoming
the centerpiece of a state park. Restoration of the bridge began in
2002, but before it was finished, a tornado struck the bridge in 2003
causing a large portion of the bridge to collapse. Contributing to the
collapse was the failure, caused by corrosion, of the anchor bolts
holding the bridge towers to their foundations. Before its collapse,
the Kinzua Bridge was ranked as the fourth tallest railway bridge in
the United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1977 and as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in
1982. The Kinzua Bridge is in Kinzua Bridge State Park off U.S. Route 6
near the borough of Mount Jewett, Pennsylvania.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Bridge>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1770:
British soldiers fired into a threatening crowd in Boston,
Massachusetts, killing five civilians.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre>
1850:
The Britannia Bridge , a tubular bridge of wrought iron rectangular
box-section spans crossing the Menai Strait between the island of
Anglesey and the mainland of Wales, opened.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Bridge>
1940:
World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the Politburo signed an
order for the execution of about 22,000 Polish military officers,
policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war that were
captured during the Soviet invasion of Poland.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre>
1946:
The term "Iron Curtain", describing the symbolic, ideological, and
physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas during the
Cold War, was popularized by former British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill during a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri,
US.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain>
1960:
British marine biologist Alister Hardy introduced his aquatic ape
hypothesis, theorizing that swimming and diving for food exerted a
strong evolutionary effect that was partly responsible for the
divergence between the common ancestors of humans and other great apes.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aquatic_ape_hypothesis>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
moonraker (n):
(nautical) A small, light sail high on a mast
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moonraker>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers
or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
--William Beveridge
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Beveridge>
Show replies by date