Wood Siding railway station was a halt in Bernwood Forest, Buckinghamshire, England, opened in 1871 as a terminus of a horse-drawn tramway serving the Duke of Buckingham's estates and connecting them to the railway at Quainton Road. After a campaign by residents of Brill, the tramway was adapted for passengers and extended beyond Wood Siding in 1872, becoming known as the Brill Tramway. The operation of the line was taken over by the Metropolitan Railway in 1899. Between 1908 and 1910 Wood Siding was rebuilt on a bridge over the Chiltern Main Line. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership, becoming the Metropolitan line of London Transport. As a result, Wood Siding became part of the London Underground network, despite being over 45 miles (72 km) from the City of London. London Transport aimed to move away from freight services, and as the line served a sparsely populated rural area the new management felt it would never be a viable passenger route. The station was closed, along with the rest of the line, in November 1935, and demolished in 1936. The remains of the bridge which supported it are still in place.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Siding_railway_station

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

639:

Ashina Jiesheshuai of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate failed in his attempt to assassinate Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashina_Jiesheshuai

1743:

French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer with the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the freezing point of water and 100 its boiling point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius

1780:

A combination of thick smoke, fog, and heavy cloud cover caused darkness to fall on parts of Canada and the New England area of the United States by noon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England%27s_Dark_Day

1962:

Actress Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday to You" during a televised celebration for U.S. President John F. Kennedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday,_Mr._President

1997:

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere, which encompasses the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, was established as a result of grassroots efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Gorda

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

chimera: 1. (Greek mythology) Alternative letter-case form of Chimera (a flame- spewing monster often represented as having two heads, one of a goat and the other of a lion; the body of a goat; and a serpent as a tail). 2. (mythology) Any fantastic creature with parts from different animals. 3. Anything composed of very disparate parts. 4. A foolish, incongruous, or vain thought or product of the imagination. 5. (architecture) A grotesque like a gargoyle, but without a spout for rainwater. 6. (genetics) An organism with genetically distinct cells originating from two zygotes. 7. Usually chimaera: a cartilaginous marine fish in the subclass Holocephali and especially the order Chimaeriformes, with a blunt snout, long tail, and a spine before the first dorsal fin. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chimera

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going. Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or the present … The century now approaching its end has been one of indiscriminate violence, it has been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record. Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of space began, the microchip was invented, revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance, transforming the world into a "global village," and relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the atom were discovered, in brief that this has been the century of science and technology.   --Abraham Pais https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Pais