96 years ago today, the Holland Tunnel opened connecting New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River. Consisting of two tubes and made a series of cast iron and steel rings bound with 19 inches of concrete running over 8,000 feet in length, it was designed by Clifford Milburn Holland, the project’s chief engineer, who died in October 1924, before it was completed. It is both a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Civil and Mechanical Engineering Landmark. READ how it came to be… (1927)
The first tunnel under the Hudson was made in 1910 and was actually for railway lines, while the cars passed over on ferries. Eventually, this car traffic had grown to such a point that the boats were at full capacity, and so many of them took up space in the harbor that some freight started going to other ports in the United States.
Groundbreaking took place in October of 1920, after several revised plans finally convinced the federal government to fund the project. Ventilation was a key component of the design, and the Holland Tunnel was the world’s first mechanically-ventilated tunnel in the world.
Rather than using caisson structures as is typical in bridge construction, six tunnel-digging shields were used, four for the New York side, and two for the New Jersey side. Essentially small pods of concrete wider in diameter than the tunnel bores, they could be inched along with the drill equipment to make the tunnel.
At 4:55 p.m. EST on November 12, 1927. President Calvin Coolidge ceremonially opened the tunnel from his yacht by turning the same key that had opened the Panama Canal in 1915. Approximately 20,000 people walked the entire length of the Holland Tunnel before it was closed to pedestrians at 7 p.m.
MORE Good News on this Date:
- Hormel corporation’s Minnesota meat packing workers sat down on the job for three days demanding higher wages in what was perhaps the first successful sit-down strike in American labor history (1933)
- Andrew Stimpson, a 25-year-old British model, was reported to be the first person proven to have been ‘cured’ of HIV, after only being prescribed daily supplements (2005)
- Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was finally freed from detention after 15 years—and she soon won a landslide victory in the national election, bringing an end the military dictatorship with a new president and cabinet (2010)
167 years ago today, Big Ben made its first big bong outside the Palace of Westminster. The colossal bell struck and reverberated, as a London Times reporter, wrote “like a potent poison that penetrates every vein in your body.” Commissioned by Sir Benjamin Hall from which it took its name, and built by John Warner & Sons of Stockton-upon-Tees, it debuted at the foot of the still incomplete clock tower.
Just after 11 o’clock, “six or eight sturdy artisans tugged lustily” at the rope attached to the ringer inside. One reporter probably was describing the loss of control over his bladder when he wrote “A liquid blow… [that] floods your inner man in an instant of time.”
The Times reporter continued, saying “it attacks and tries every fiber in the muscle, it makes your bones rattle and your marrow creep.” The bell’s designer predicted the bell would sound a natural E, and many came armed with tuning forks and cotton fluff to stuff their ears with. The unanimous agreement afterward was that E had been perfectly attained.
This particular bell would end up breaking, to be replaced by the second, made by Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, which horrified residents with its terrible sound. One Londoner told reporters “that one would suppose it was tolling the funeral dirge of the whole human race!… It is voted a bore, by general assent.” This bell also broke, but was repaired with a more subdued sound which chimes the hours to this day.
A common refrain said of the great tower with its clock and bell goes “don’t watch the clock, do what it does: keep going.” (1856)
And, 41 years ago today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
The haunting monument remembering the Vietnam War stirred controversy because of its modernist design, but the reflective wall has become a beloved memorial. The names of those 58,267 killed or missing in the conflict are carved in rows on the 250-foot-long tapering slabs of polished black granite, with visitors fondling or tracing them onto paper. A jury of eight architects and sculptors unanimously chose the design by 21-year-old Maya Ying Lin, an architecture student from Yale University. (1982)
67 years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama’s policy of racial segregation on public buses, ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott, made famous by Rosa Parks.
Civil rights lawyers filed a lawsuit in June and a three-judge panel of the District Court ruled 2-1 that “the enforced segregation of black and white passengers on motor buses operating in the City of Montgomery violates the Constitution and laws of the United States” because the conditions deprived people of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Alabama and the city appealed, but the decision was summarily affirmed by the Supreme Court, which ordered them to desegregate its buses with an official written notice by federal marshals. (1956)
And, Happy 56th Birthday to late-night TV host, comedian, and writer Jimmy Kimmel. Born in Brooklyn, the star of Jimmy Kimmel Live has hosted the Emmy Awards and Academy Awards twice.
After his wife gave birth to their second child in 2017, the infant was born with a rare congenital heart defect and underwent successful surgery at three days old and a tearful Kimmel announced on the show his gratitude for healthcare professionals and the insurance that saves so many people born with preexisting conditions. (1967)
Happy 54th Birthday to Scottish actor Gerard Butler, who gave up on being an attorney after he realized he had no interest in something he spent 7 years of his life studying and practicing.
In 2006, he starred as the Spartan king Leonidas in 300, which is often described as his breakout role—and definitely the one that earned him a legion of male fans. Millions of females became fans the following year after he starred in the romantic comedy, P.S. I Love You with Hilary Swank.
Butler starred as Secret Service agent Mike Banning in the White House action thriller Olympus Has Fallen 6 years ago, opposite Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman. He reprised that role in a sequel London Has Fallen, and recently played Mike Banning again in the August 2019 film Angel Has Fallen, in which Nick Nolte played the father who he’s shocked to learn is a munition expert. WATCH him talk about his home being burned in the LA fire and his roots in Scotland on Jimmy Kimmel Live… (1969)
83 years ago today, the animated film Fantasia, conceived and produced by Walt Disney himself, was released. It was only Disney’s third animated film and, though it featured Mickey Mouse in the role of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, it had almost no dialogue and consisted of eight pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, including The Nutcracker Suite and Pastoral Symphony.
The 2-hour movie was unable to make a profit that decade, but it was destined to become a classic—and also the 24th-highest-grossing film of all time in the U.S. (adjusted for inflation).
Up until Fantasia’s release, movie soundtracks, LPs, and recordings of all types were presented in mono. Thanks to Disney and Leopold Stokowski’s experimental spirit, the engineering prowess of Bell Labs and RCA—at great cost to Disney—Fantasia brought stereo sound to the masses via a multi-channel system that produced an aural marvel for audiences inside 13 theaters across the country. (1940)
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