100 Fun Facts About Bridge

In which year did the Golden Gate Bridge open to the public?

At the time it was both the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world, titles it kept until 1964 and 1998 respectively.

What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?

Architect Irving Morrow picked it over a US Navy suggestion of black and yellow stripes for visibility.

How long is the Golden Gate Bridge's main span?

Chief engineer Joseph Strauss had once designed a 55-mile railway bridge across the Bering Strait for his thesis.

Which 1964 New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title as the world's longest suspension span?

It held the record until Britain's Humber Bridge in 1981, and its name was misspelled with one z until 2018.

Which annual event has started on the bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn since 1976?

It is one of the only times the bridge is closed to cars. It was misspelled 'Verrazano' officially from 1960 to 2018.

Which waterway does the Brooklyn Bridge cross?

Opened in 1883, it was the first fixed crossing of the river and an early steel-wire suspension bridge.

Which engineer completed the Brooklyn Bridge, assisted by his wife Emily, after his father John died?

He was left bedridden by decompression sickness from the caissons, and Emily relayed his instructions to the site for years.

How did P. T. Barnum help prove the Brooklyn Bridge was safe in 1884?

Jumbo led the parade. It calmed public doubts after a stampede on the bridge had killed twelve people the year before, and it was free advertising for the circus.

Tower Bridge in London combines suspension spans with what kind of opening central section?

Horace Jones designed it and it opened in 1894. The central bascules lift to let ships through.

In the 2020s, roughly how many times a year is Tower Bridge's central section raised?

In its first year they went up 6,160 times, about seventeen a day, when the Thames was still a working port.

What is the Sydney Harbour Bridge's nickname?

British firm Dorman Long of Middlesbrough built it, borrowing from its own Tyne Bridge design. It opened in 1932.

How many hand-driven rivets hold the Sydney Harbour Bridge together?

All Australian-made, and the last was driven through the deck on 21 January 1932.

Who slashed the ribbon at the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening in 1932 before the premier could cut it?

He was on horseback, in uniform, protesting that a royal had not been invited. He later sued the police for wrongful arrest and won.

Which Japanese crossing, opened in 1998, had the world's longest suspension span at 1,991 metres?

It shrugged off the 1995 Kobe earthquake mid-construction. Turkey's Çanakkale Bridge beat it by 32 metres in 2022.

The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge since 2022, crosses which strait?

Its 2,023-metre main span commemorates the 1915 Gallipoli campaign in its name.

Which country's Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, at 164.8 km, is the longest bridge in the world?

It is a viaduct on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and has held the Guinness record since 2011.

Which British architect designed France's Millau Viaduct, long the world's tallest bridge?

Its structural height is 343 metres, taller than the Eiffel Tower. Engineer Michel Virlogeux led the design.

Jewellers have held Ponte Vecchio's shops since the 1590s. Who occupied them originally?

It was the only bridge in Florence the retreating Germans spared in 1944. The current structure dates from about 1345.

The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of how many bridges across Venice's Grand Canal?

Antonio da Ponte's stone single-span replaced earlier wooden bridges and was finished in 1591.

Venice's Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace with what?

The romantic idea that prisoners sighed at their last view of Venice was a 19th-century invention popularised by Byron.

By legend, at exactly what time did Charles IV lay the first stone of Charles Bridge in 1357?

The emperor was a numerologist and 1357 9/7 5:31 makes a palindrome. Thirty statues line the bridge, all now replicas.

The Øresund Bridge links Sweden with which country?

It runs 8 km to the artificial island of Peberholm, then a 4 km tunnel finishes the crossing to Copenhagen's side. It opened in 2000.

Scotland's Forth Bridge, opened in 1890, is what type of railway bridge?

It had the longest cantilever span in the world until Canada's Quebec Bridge in 1919 and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire, opened in 1781, was the world's first major bridge of what?

Abraham Darby III cast the ironwork at Coalbrookdale, cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

The Pont du Gard in southern France was built by the Romans to carry what?

Its aqueduct ran over 50 km. The three tiers of arches stand 48.8 metres high and it has been a UNESCO site since 1985.

What nickname did construction workers give the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge for how it moved in the wind?

It opened on 1 July 1940 and tore itself apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November the same year.

What was the only fatality when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940?

He was left in a stranded car and bit the man who tried to rescue him. Physics textbooks still argue over resonance versus aeroelastic flutter.

The Mackinac Bridge, the 'Mighty Mac', connects the two peninsulas of which US state?

Opened in 1957, it is the longest suspension bridge between anchorages in the Western Hemisphere. Before it, only ferries linked the two.

How long is Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, opened in 1964?

Two tunnels let shipping pass over the crossing. It replaced ferries that had run since the 1930s.

Canada's Confederation Bridge links the mainland to which province?

Islanders called it 'the Fixed Link' before it was named. It opened in 1997 and runs 12.9 km.

An 1830s London Bridge was bought in 1968 by Robert McCulloch and rebuilt in which US state?

Only the exterior granite blocks made the trip, to face a new bridge at Lake Havasu City. The story that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge is a myth.

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, the world's longest sea crossing, is roughly how long?

It is a system of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel and four artificial islands, finished in 2018.

Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia, was renamed after which event?

It is now officially the 15 July Martyrs Bridge. When it opened in 1973 it had the longest span outside the United States.

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge over the Tyne was the first bridge in the world to do what?

Its shape and motion earned it the nickname the 'Blinking Eye Bridge'. It opened in 2001.

Which Ottoman bridge in Bosnia was destroyed by shelling in 1993 and reopened in 2004?

Mostar is named after the 'mostari', the keepers of the bridge. Divers still leap from it into the Neretva.

Vietnam's Golden Bridge near Da Nang, opened in 2018, appears to be held up by what?

The hands are actually fibreglass and wire mesh. The 150-metre footbridge loops almost back on itself in the Ba Na Hills.

Lucerne's Kapellbrücke, Europe's oldest covered wooden bridge, was badly damaged by what in 1993?

Many of its 17th-century interior paintings were lost. The bridge dates from about 1365 and was part of the city's fortifications.

The Mycenaean Arkadiko Bridge in Greece, one of the oldest surviving bridges, dates to roughly when?

It is a corbel arch and is still in existence. China's Anji Bridge, from around 600 AD, is the world's oldest open-spandrel stone arch.

In the card game contract bridge, how many players sit at the table?

They play in two partnerships, partners sitting opposite each other, with a standard 52-card deck.

Which American railroad heir set out the rules of contract bridge in 1925?

Within a few years his version had so displaced auction bridge that 'bridge' simply meant contract bridge. He also won the America's Cup three times.

Despite its name, the Pont Neuf is the oldest standing bridge across the Seine in which city?

Pont Neuf means 'New Bridge'; it was named to set it apart from older bridges lined with houses, and was inaugurated by Henry IV in 1607.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge is based on a design by which Victorian engineer?

He died in 1859 without seeing it finished; colleagues completed it in 1864 as his memorial, partly using chains from his demolished Hungerford bridge.

Roughly how long is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest continuous span over water?

The Louisiana crossing runs from Metairie to Mandeville on 9,500 concrete pilings; Guinness split its record into 'continuous' and 'aggregate' categories in 2011.

What world record did Colorado's 955-foot-high Royal Gorge crossing hold from 1929 to 2001?

It was built in six months purely as a tourist attraction, not a transport route, and a Chinese bridge finally surpassed it in 2001.

Si-o-se-pol, the 'bridge of thirty-three spans', crosses the Zayanderud in which Iranian city?

Formally the Allahverdi Khan Bridge, it is the largest of eleven historic bridges on the river and stacks two rows of 33 stone arches.

Wales's Pontcysyllte, completed in 1805 by Telford and Jessop, is the world's highest what?

It carries the Llangollen stretch of the Ellesmere Canal over the River Dee in a cast-iron trough on 19 arches and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What is the structural height of the Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge for 20 years?

Engineer Michel Virlogeux led the design with Norman Foster; the cable-stayed crossing of the Tarn valley opened to traffic in December 2004.

Kolkata's Howrah Bridge was officially renamed in 1965 after which Nobel laureate?

The cantilever bridge over the Hooghly became Rabindra Setu, though almost nobody uses the name; it carries some 100,000 vehicles a day.

Japan's Kintai Bridge, built in 1673 at Iwakuni, crosses the Nishiki River on how many arches?

For nearly 300 years its versions stood without metal nails, and a special tax funded rebuilding the middle spans every 20 years and the end spans every 40.

Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge was renamed after the 1974 revolution. Whom did it honour before?

The dictator ordered its construction and it opened as Ponte Salazar in 1966; its builders had earlier worked on the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Which Australian film star worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before finding fame on television?

Paul Hogan was a bridge rigger when he first appeared on the amateur talent show New Faces in 1971, fifteen years before 'Crocodile Dundee' made him a worldwide name.

What kind of vehicle leapt a gap in London's Tower Bridge in 1952 when the roadway began rising beneath it?

A double-decker bus on route 78 made the jump when driver Albert Gunter decided in a split second to accelerate, and the City Corporation rewarded his bravery with £10.

What bird did Emily, the chief engineer's wife, carry on the first carriage ride across the Brooklyn Bridge?

A rooster rode along as a sign of victory, after Emily had spent more than ten years relaying her bedridden husband's instructions to his assistants.

In the Norwegian fairy tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, what kind of creature lurks beneath the bridge?

A troll threatens to eat each goat in turn, but the two smaller brothers talk their way past and the biggest tosses him into the stream with his horns.

Christmas Island built a five-metre-high bridge over a road so that millions of which animals could migrate safely?

Red crabs carpet the island every wet season as they march from its interior to the sea to breed, so rangers also fence busy roads and funnel them into underpasses.

Which star of 'Lawrence of Arabia' once ranked among the world's top fifty contract bridge players?

Omar Sharif called the game his personal passion, and in 1967 he formed the Omar Sharif Bridge Circus, a touring team of professionals who played exhibition matches.

Which Impressionist painted the Japanese footbridge over the water-lily pond in his garden at Giverny again and again?

Claude Monet made the pond after settling at Giverny in 1883, and in 1900 he exhibited a first group of garden pictures devoted mainly to the bridge.

Which nickname did the Glienicke crossing between Berlin and Potsdam earn during the Cold War?

Bridge of Spies stuck after the first swap there in 1962, when the Soviet agent Rudolf Abel was traded for Gary Powers, the pilot of a downed American U-2.

The covered bridges of Madison County, made famous by a 1992 novel and a Clint Eastwood film, are in which US state?

Iowa is where Robert James Waller, on leave from his teaching job, set out to photograph Madison County's bridges and came away with the idea for his bestselling romance.

A popular myth says which scientist built Cambridge's wooden Mathematical Bridge without using any nuts or bolts?

Isaac Newton could not have been involved: he died in 1727, twenty-two years before the bridge was built at Queens' College to a design by William Etheridge.

Charles Bridge, lined with thirty baroque statues, has crossed the Vltava since the Middle Ages in which capital city?

Prague relied on it as the only way over the river until 1841, and every statue on it is a replica, with the originals moved indoors to a museum.

Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge in town spared from destruction in World War II, spans the Arno in which Italian city?

Florence is thought to have bridged the Arno's narrowest point since Roman times, and locals have long said the old bridge survived the war on Hitler's express order.

Which southern French city's ruined medieval bridge, the Pont Saint-Bénézet, is celebrated in a famous children's song?

Avignon kept only four arches of the bridge that once crossed the Rhône, and the song's modern version comes from a comic opera first staged in 1853.

Poohsticks, the game of dropping twigs from a bridge into a stream, first appeared in a 1928 story by which author?

A. A. Milne is thought to have first played it with his son on a Sussex footbridge since renamed Poohsticks Bridge, and a world championship began on the Thames in 1984.

Which duo's final studio album, 'Bridge over Troubled Water', won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1971?

Simon & Garfunkel saw it top the charts in more than ten countries and finish as the best-selling album of 1970, 1971 and 1972.

Contract bridge is a direct descendant of which older English trick-taking game, long the favourite of card players?

Whist was dominant for centuries, and the first known bridge rule book, written in 1886 by an English financier in Constantinople, called its game a Russian form of it.

In contract bridge, which player's cards are laid face up on the table and played by their partner?

Dummy puts the hand down only after the opening lead, and from then on has few rights, taking no part in choosing which card to play.

Which billionaire investor, a regular bridge partner of Bill Gates, sponsored a cup match bearing his own name in 2006?

Warren Buffett was said to spend about twelve hours a week on the game, with the champion player Sharon Osberg as another of his regular partners.

Which Romantic poet gave Venice's Bridge of Sighs its English name, translating the Italian 'Ponte dei Sospiri'?

Lord Byron's translation caught on so widely that bridges around the world have been nicknamed after it, and Offenbach used the name for an 1861 opera.

What name did nineteen Golden Gate Bridge workers adopt after a safety net saved them from fatal falls?

Half Way to Hell Club members were the lucky ones: months before the opening, a falling scaffold tore through the same net and ten men were killed.

Which Alabama city's Edmund Pettus Bridge was the scene of 'Bloody Sunday', an attack on civil rights marchers in 1965?

Selma has seen efforts to rename the bridge, built in 1940 and named for a Confederate general and Klan leader, with the march leader John Lewis proposed instead.

Which US senator drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, in an accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne?

Ted Kennedy survived, and the wooden Dike Bridge became an unwanted tourist attraction, visited by thousands each year and picked at by souvenir hunters.

The Old North Bridge, where militia routed British regulars on the Revolutionary War's first day, stands in which town?

Concord saw about 400 minutemen and militia face roughly 90 British soldiers there, and the bridge on the spot is a replica put up in 1956.

Which Scottish leader fought alongside Andrew Moray to defeat an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297?

William Wallace and Moray waited until as many English soldiers had filed over the bridge as they believed they could beat, then attacked before the rest could follow.

Which Roman emperor defeated his rival Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome in AD 312?

Constantine saw Maxentius drown in the Tiber during the rout, and the victory set him on the path to becoming sole ruler of the Roman Empire.

'The Bridge on the River Kwai' is set in wartime Thailand, but in which country was the film actually shot?

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, hosted the shoot near Kitulgala, and the film went on to win seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.

The 'bridge too far' of Operation Market Garden in September 1944 crossed the Lower Rhine at which Dutch city?

Arnhem saw some 740 British paratroopers under John Frost hold one end of the bridge for days, and the crossing rebuilt there after the war bears his name.

Which Baltimore crossing collapsed in March 2024 after the container ship Dali lost power and struck one of its piers?

Francis Scott Key Bridge spans fell while a maintenance crew was repairing potholes on the roadway, and six of the workers were killed.

Which mathematician proved in 1736 that no walk could cross each of Königsberg's seven bridges exactly once?

Leonhard Euler saw that only the sequence of crossings mattered, not the route taken on land, and in showing it he laid the foundations of graph theory.

Which winged creature of West Virginia folklore was later linked by author John Keel to the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse?

Mothman sightings around Point Pleasant ran for thirteen months and ended on the day the bridge fell, a disaster engineers traced to a single cracked eyebar.

Which term for bidding and winning all thirteen tricks in bridge was later borrowed by tennis, golf and baseball?

Grand slam started as card-table jargon and reached tennis in 1933 through a sportswriter's comparison; taking twelve of the thirteen tricks is only a small slam.

Which shape do engineers repeat along the sides of a truss bridge because it stays rigid when its sides are fixed?

Triangle frames cannot change shape unless a side changes length, which is why the simplest truss is a single one and a classic bicycle frame joins two.

Which capital's Széchenyi Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, was the first permanent bridge over the Danube in its country?

Budapest owes the bridge to Count István Széchenyi, who pushed for it, an English engineer who designed it and an unrelated Scottish namesake who built it.

Which Renaissance artist designed a single-span bridge over the Golden Horn for the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II?

Leonardo da Vinci's single span was never built for the sultan, but a small-scale version of his design finally went up in Norway in 2001.

Which French engineer's company built Porto's Maria Pia railway bridge in 1877 and then the Garabit Viaduct?

Gustave Eiffel won the Porto job with by far the cheapest bid, and the Garabit Viaduct that followed had the world's longest arch when it was finished in 1884.

Villagers in Peru rebuild Q'eswachaka, the last remaining Inca rope bridge, every June using cables made of what?

Grass ropes prepared by family groups from four communities are bound into cables at the site each year, even though a modern bridge stands close by.

What did the British Army order troops to do on bridges after one collapsed under a marching column in 1831?

Break step became the rule after 74 riflemen marching four abreast felt Broughton Suspension Bridge vibrate in time with their feet, then give way and injure twenty of them.

In which Ian Fleming novel does James Bond use a stacked deck to beat the cheating Hugo Drax at bridge?

Moonraker grew from a screenplay too short for a full novel, so Fleming added the card game at M's club, where Bond wins £15,000, about seven times his salary.

Which San Francisco eccentric, self-styled 'Emperor of the United States', decreed that a bridge be built to Oakland?

Joshua Norton had already 'abolished' Congress by decree in 1859, and a plaque dedicated in 1939 honours his call for the bridge that finally opened in 1936.

Which American bridge authority, widely known as 'Mr. Bridge', hosted a television show on the game from 1959 to 1964?

Charles Goren built his teaching on the 4-3-2-1 point count, and by 1958 he was earning about $150,000 a year and had been profiled in a Time cover story.

What name is given to the pressurised boxes in which Brooklyn Bridge workers dug out the tower foundations underwater?

Caissons take their name from a French word for a box, and the compressed air inside them left numerous workers dead or permanently injured by decompression sickness.

Rome's Ponte Sant'Angelo, lined with Bernini's angels, was built by which emperor to reach his own mausoleum?

Hadrian completed it in AD 134 as the Pons Aelius, named from his family name, and the tomb it served is the towering Castel Sant'Angelo.

Which trophy, first contested in 1950, goes to the winners of bridge's oldest world championship for national teams?

Bermuda Bowl is a name taken from the Atlantic archipelago that hosted the first tournament, and the championship has since settled into being played every two years.

Which Spanish architect designed Seville's Alamillo Bridge and Dublin's harp-like Samuel Beckett Bridge?

Santiago Calatrava balanced the Seville deck with a single tower leaning back 32 degrees, a concept traced to his own sculpture of stacked marble cubes held by a taut wire.

Myanmar's U Bein Bridge, built around 1850 with timber reclaimed from a former royal palace, is made of which wood?

Teak posts, 984 of them originally, were hammered seven feet into the lake bed to carry the 1.2-kilometre footbridge, believed to be the oldest of its kind.

At which 2018 multi-sport event did contract bridge players from fourteen nations compete for medals?

Asian Games organisers staged the bridge events at an exhibition centre in Jakarta, where 213 players competed over twelve days.

Which bridge term for a hand with no card above a nine honours an English earl who bet against it?

Yarborough hands would have won £1,000 from the 19th-century earl, who collected £1 every time a player was dealt anything better.

Which Scottish poet, lampooned as the worst in British history, wrote an 1880 lament for the Tay Bridge disaster?

William McGonagall had praised the new railway bridge in verse more than a year before it fell, and he wrote about 200 poems in all.

Thomas Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge, completed in 1826, links the mainland of Wales with which island?

Anglesey islanders made their living selling cattle, and before the bridge the animals had to be driven into the strait and made to swim to the mainland markets.

Which American author won a Pulitzer Prize for 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', about a rope bridge collapse in Peru?

Thornton Wilder made it his second novel and the best-selling work of fiction of 1928, tracing what brought five people onto the bridge at the moment it fell.