109 Fun Facts About Transportation

The Wright Flyer made the first sustained powered, controlled flight in December of which year?

On 17 December 1903 the Wrights flew the Flyer four times near Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, the longest flight lasting 59 seconds; the aircraft now hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.

What was the nickname of the Ford Model T?

The Model T earned the nickname Tin Lizzie; over 15 million were built between 1908 and 1927, and Henry Ford watched the 15 millionth roll off the line at Highland Park, Michigan.

Which car overtook the Model T as the best-selling car in history in 1972?

The Volkswagen Beetle passed the Model T's total on 17 February 1972; production of the Type 1 finally ended at the Puebla plant in Mexico on 30 July 2003, after 21,529,464 cars.

Japan's first Shinkansen line opened in 1964, shortly before which event?

The Tōkaidō Shinkansen began service on 1 October 1964, nine days before the Tokyo Summer Olympics opened, linking Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka.

How many passengers died in Shinkansen derailments or collisions during its first 50 years?

Zero: from the 1964 opening through 2014 the Shinkansen carried billions of passengers without a single passenger death from a derailment or collision, despite a 2004 earthquake derailment near Niigata.

The world's first underground passenger railway opened in London in which year?

The Metropolitan Railway opened on 10 January 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon, using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives.

The Johnston typeface used across the London Underground was created in which year?

Edward Johnston completed his sans-serif alphabet in 1916, three years after Frank Pick of the Underground Group commissioned it; the lettering and the roundel became the network's lasting branding.

Which country began building the Panama Canal in 1881 before abandoning the project?

France started digging in 1881 through a private company; engineering problems, malaria and yellow fever ended the effort in 1889, and the United States took over in 1904 and opened the canal in 1914.

Ships transiting the Panama Canal are lifted by locks 26 metres up into which artificial reservoir?

Gatun Lake sits 26 metres above sea level; it was created by damming the Chagres River so ships could cross much of the isthmus afloat instead of through a dug channel.

Which two airlines owned and operated Concorde fleets in scheduled service?

British Airways and Air France each bought their own Concorde fleets and flew them from 1976 to 2003; Braniff only leased the jets for a subsonic Dallas-Washington interchange in 1979-80.

Concorde's regular service speed was capped at what to extend the life of its airframe?

Concorde cruised at Mach 2.02, about 2,180 km/h; flying faster would have pushed the aluminium alloy skin beyond roughly 127°C at the nose, shortening the airframe's fatigue life.

Which former bicycle-maker's company, founded by J. K. Starley, later became a British car brand?

J. K. Starley's Rover safety bicycle of 1885 set the modern bicycle pattern; his firm took the Rover name and built its first car in 1904, becoming a long-lived British marque.

The Segway self-balancing transporter was invented by whom?

Dean Kamen, the inventor also known for the iBOT stair-climbing wheelchair, unveiled the Segway on Good Morning America in Bryant Park on 3 December 2001 after months of breathless speculation.

The Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937 while docking at a naval air station in which US state?

Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey was the landing site on 6 May 1937; Herbert Morrison's anguished radio report, recorded there, was broadcast the next day and became one of the century's most famous recordings.

What gas filled the Hindenburg?

Hydrogen filled the Hindenburg's 16 gas cells because the United States, the only large helium producer, would not export helium to Nazi Germany; the flammable gas made the 1937 fire catastrophic.

Which airline put the Boeing 747 into commercial service in January 1970?

Pan Am, which had pushed Boeing to build the jumbo and ordered 25 in 1966, flew the first scheduled 747 service from New York to London on 22 January 1970.

Who led the design team for the Boeing 747?

Joe Sutter, pulled off the 737 programme in 1965, led the roughly 4,500 engineers nicknamed 'the Incredibles' who took the 747 from design to first flight in under three years.

The Channel Tunnel connects Folkestone in England with which French town?

The French terminal is at Coquelles, just outside Calais; Queen Elizabeth II and President Mitterrand opened the 50.45 km tunnel on 6 May 1994, about a year behind schedule.

The Trans-Siberian Railway runs from Moscow to which Pacific port?

The line ends at Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast, 9,289 km and about six days by train from Moscow; the route was completed entirely on Russian soil when the Amur bridge at Khabarovsk opened.

The world's first traffic lights, installed in December 1868, stood outside which building?

Railway engineer J. P. Knight's signal outside the Houses of Parliament in London used semaphore arms by day and red and green gas lamps by night, worked by a policeman; it exploded within a month, injuring its operator.

Which policeman developed the first electric traffic light in Salt Lake City in 1912?

Lester Wire, a Salt Lake City police officer, built a two-colour electric signal in 1912; two years later the American Traffic Signal Company installed a version at East 105th and Euclid in Cleveland, Ohio.

Nils Bohlin developed the modern three-point seat belt for which car maker, which made it standard in 1959?

Volvo fitted Bohlin's three-point belt as standard on the Amazon and PV544 in 1959 and opened the patent to rival makers free of charge, so the design spread across the industry.

Which US president signed the 1956 act that created the Interstate Highway System?

Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act on 29 June 1956, having been impressed by German autobahns in the war; construction later displaced roughly a million people and sparked 'freeway revolts'.

In 1956 Malcom McLean loaded 58 containers onto which converted tanker?

The SS Ideal X, a converted Second World War T2 tanker, sailed from Newark to Houston on 26 April 1956 with 58 containers on deck; by 2009 roughly 90% of non-bulk cargo moved in containers.

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

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, opened on 21 November 1964 between Staten Island and Brooklyn, had a 1,298 m main span, 18 m longer than the Golden Gate's; it held the record until the Humber Bridge in 1981.

Which French diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal, opened in 1869?

Ferdinand de Lesseps, a former French consul in Egypt, founded the Suez Canal Company in 1858 and saw the canal opened in November 1869; unlike Panama, Suez is a lock-free sea-level waterway.

Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 locomotive competition?

The Rainhill Trials of October 1829 were staged by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to settle whether moving locomotives or rope-hauling stationary engines should work the line; Rocket won the £500 prize.

In which year was Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen, considered the first practical car, patented?

Karl Benz received German patent 37435 for his three-wheeled Patent-Motorwagen on 29 January 1886; his firm Benz & Cie. in Mannheim grew into the world's largest car maker by 1900.

The Montgolfier brothers made their living making what?

The Montgolfiers ran the family paper mill at Annonay; their first public balloon, flown there on 4 June 1783, was sackcloth lined with three thin layers of their own paper.

Which airline took the first delivery of the Airbus A380 in October 2007?

Singapore Airlines took delivery of the first A380 on 15 October 2007 and flew it from Singapore to Sydney ten days later; the double-decker is certified for up to 853 passengers.

How many lifeboats did the Titanic actually carry on her maiden voyage?

Titanic carried 20 lifeboats — 14 standard boats, two cutters and four collapsibles — with room for 1,178 people, about a third of her full capacity, though that exceeded the Board of Trade's outdated minimum of 16.

In which city was the Titanic built?

Harland and Wolff built her at its Queen's Island yard in Belfast as the second of three Olympic-class liners, between RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic; she was launched on 31 May 1911.

The Vespa scooter's name is Italian for which insect?

Vespa is Italian for wasp, a name Enrico Piaggio reportedly gave the 1946 scooter for its narrow waist and buzzing engine; Roman Holiday (1953) later gave it a global boost in sales.

What advisory speed did Germany introduce for unrestricted Autobahn stretches in 1978?

The 130 km/h Richtgeschwindigkeit was introduced in 1978; driving faster is legal on unrestricted stretches, but courts treat exceeding it as a factor raising a driver's share of liability in a crash.

Which entrepreneur published the 2013 white paper describing the Hyperloop?

Elon Musk published the Hyperloop Alpha proposal in August 2013, proposing low-pressure tubes and capsules riding on air bearings between Los Angeles and the Bay Area; he had teased a 'fifth mode of transport' in 2012.

The word "rickshaw" comes from a term in which language?

The word comes from the Japanese jinrikisha, literally 'human-powered vehicle', built from jin (person), riki (power) and sha (vehicle); the carts appeared in Tokyo around 1869.

What is unusual about the shape of a Venetian gondola's hull?

It is asymmetrical along its length: the left side is about 24 cm wider than the right, so the boat runs straight under a single oar worked from the right side instead of turning.

Jesse Reno's first working escalator was installed in 1896 as a ride at which amusement spot?

Jesse Reno's 'inclined elevator', a moving belt with cleats, ran for two weeks at Coney Island's Old Iron Pier in September 1896 and carried some 75,000 riders; Harrods installed a Piat version in 1898.

Who staged a death-defying demonstration of his safety elevator at New York's Crystal Palace in 1854?

Elisha Otis had the hoist rope cut while he stood on the platform and his safety brake held; the first passenger elevator with it went into the Haughwout store at 488 Broadway in 1857.

The first practical hovercraft famously crossed which body of water in July 1959?

Christopher Cockerell's first practical hovercraft crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover on 25 July 1959, the 50th anniversary of Blériot's flight; he joked the Navy called it a plane, the RAF a boat.

The 603 km/h rail speed record set in 2015 belongs to an experimental maglev from which country?

Japan's L0 Series maglev reached 603 km/h on the Yamanashi test track on 21 April 2015, a record for a crewed rail vehicle; the superconducting maglev was built for the planned Tokyo–Nagoya Chuo Shinkansen.

Uber's ride-hailing service first launched publicly in 2010 in which city?

UberCab, as it was first called, launched in San Francisco in mid-2010 as a black-car hailing app; co-founder Garrett Camp had been inspired by an $800 private-driver bill one New Year's Eve.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin's first airship made its maiden flight in 1900 over which body of water?

LZ 1 rose from a floating hangar on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen on 2 July 1900 and stayed aloft about 18 minutes; the later Graf Zeppelin flew scheduled transatlantic services to Brazil.

Fulton's 1807 North River Steamboat carried passengers between New York City and which city?

The North River Steamboat, later known as the Clermont, ran the 150 miles up the Hudson from New York City to Albany in 32 hours in August 1807, proving commercial steam navigation viable.

The Magic Roundabout, five mini-roundabouts around one island, is in which English town?

Swindon's Magic Roundabout opened in 1972 near the County Ground football stadium; Frank Blackmore, inventor of the mini-roundabout, designed it so traffic can circulate in both directions around the central island.

The world's first passenger railway service, horse-drawn, began in 1807 in which country?

The Oystermouth Railway, later the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, began carrying fare-paying passengers in horse-drawn carriages along Swansea Bay in Wales on 25 March 1807; it later ran steam and electric trams.

The penny-farthing bicycle takes its name from what?

Seen from the side, the big front wheel and small rear wheel resembled a large penny leading a tiny farthing.

The Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet plane, first flew in August of which year?

Test pilot Erich Warsitz flew the He 178 on 27 August 1939, days before the war began; Hans von Ohain built its HeS 3 engine unaware of Frank Whittle's parallel work in Britain.

An aircraft's "black box" flight recorder is actually required to be painted which colour?

Australian scientist David Warren conceived the cockpit voice recorder in 1953 while working in Port Melbourne.

The first Express d'Orient of June 1883 ran from Paris to which city?

The Express d'Orient's first run on 5 June 1883 went only as far as Vienna; from October it continued to Giurgiu on the Danube, and through service reached Constantinople in 1889.

Grand Central Terminal in New York has 44 of what, spread over two levels?

Grand Central has 44 platforms serving 67 tracks on two levels, more than any other railway station in the world as of its centenary in 2013; the four-faced brass clock on the information booth is a famous meeting spot.

How long did Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight from New York to Paris take?

The Spirit of St. Louis took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island on 20 May 1927 and landed at Le Bourget about 33 and a half hours later, winning the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

US Route 66 ran from Chicago to which Californian city?

Route 66 ended at Santa Monica on the Pacific coast, its western terminus from 1936; established in 1926 and decommissioned in 1985, it was dubbed the 'Mother Road' in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Stanislas Baudry's 1820s horse-drawn service, which gave the bus its name, ran in which French city?

Baudry's carriages in Nantes ran from the city centre to his bathhouse in the suburb of Richebourg; they stopped outside a hatter named Omnès whose sign read 'Omnes Omnibus', and the name stuck.

Which 1936 aircraft is regarded as the first successful, practical, fully controllable helicopter?

The Focke-Wulf Fw 61, with twin side-by-side rotors, first flew on 26 June 1936 and was demonstrated indoors by Hanna Reitsch in 1938; Sikorsky's R-4 later became the first helicopter in full production.

London's first hackney-coach rank of the 1630s stood outside the Maypole Inn on which street?

Captain John Bailey stationed four hackney coaches for hire at the Maypole in the Strand in 1634, the first such rank in London; coaches for hire had been documented in the city since 1605.

The hansom cab was patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, who worked as what?

Joseph Hansom was an architect, designer of Birmingham Town Hall and founder of The Builder magazine; his 1834 two-wheeled cab was light enough for one horse and nimble in London traffic.

Christopher Cockerell tested his hovercraft concept using a hairdryer and two tin cans that had held what?

Cockerell used tins that had held coffee and cat food, one nested inside the other, and blew air down the gap between them; the ring of fast-moving air formed the peripheral jet that kept the cushion in.

Which company originally owned 'Hovercraft' as a trademark?

Saunders-Roe, the Isle of Wight flying-boat builder that constructed the first hovercraft in 1959, registered 'Hovercraft' as a trademark, so rivals used names such as air-cushion vehicle; its hovercraft work passed to the British Hovercraft Corporation in 1966.

Which three animals became the first passengers in a hot-air balloon, flown before Louis XVI at Versailles in 1783?

A sheep, duck and rooster stayed aloft for about eight minutes and drifted some three kilometres. The sheep, named Montauciel, was picked as a fair stand-in for a human body.

The cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road shows the band walking across which animal-named pedestrian crossing?

Zebra crossings are named for their black-and-white stripes. The one outside the Abbey Road studios was given Grade II listed status in 2010 for its cultural importance.

Which supercar maker was founded in 1963 by a tractor manufacturer unhappy with the clutch of his Ferrari?

Lamborghini was the work of Ferruccio Lamborghini, who had grown rich building tractors, boilers and air conditioners. By his own account, Enzo Ferrari brushed off his complaint.

What did North American railroad companies introduce in 1883, decades before Congress made it law?

Standard time zones replaced a tangle in which every line kept its own clock time, so some junctions needed a separate clock for each one. Congress adopted the zones in 1918.

Which American vehicle got its standard colour because black lettering shows best on it in dim light?

School bus yellow was settled at a meeting organised by Frank Cyr, a Columbia University professor since nicknamed the father of the yellow school bus.

Which aviator landed in a Northern Irish pasture in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic?

Amelia Earhart was asked by a farm hand whether she had flown far, and answered that she had come from America. The crossing had taken just under 15 hours.

Which billionaire piloted the enormous wooden Spruce Goose flying boat on its only flight, in November 1947?

Howard Hughes disliked the nickname, and it was wrong anyway: wartime limits on aluminium meant the aircraft was built almost entirely of birch.

Alaska's Iditarod, a race of roughly 1,000 miles from Anchorage to Nome, is run using which mode of transport?

Dog sleds once delivered mail, firewood and gold ore along the same trail, because the northern harbours were icebound from October to June.

What are Thailand's three-wheeled motorised taxis, a familiar sight in Bangkok traffic, popularly called?

Tuk-tuk is onomatopoeic, copying the noise of a small two-stroke engine. About 20,000 were registered as taxis across Thailand in 2017.

Which shape, picked for US stop signs in 1922, lets drivers recognise one even when facing the back of it?

Octagon signs were not always red: from 1924 to 1954 American stop signs carried their lettering on a yellow background.

Which luxury car maker's bonnet mascot, the Spirit of Ecstasy, was modelled on a motoring editor's secret lover?

Rolls-Royce received the figurine from sculptor Charles Sykes in 1911. It is also called the Flying Lady, the Silver Lady or simply Eleanor, after his model, Eleanor Thornton.

Which gull-winged car with an unpainted stainless-steel body is the time machine in the Back to the Future films?

DeLorean chose stainless steel mainly to get around a paint-finish problem, and recovered the extra cost by skipping paint altogether. Three cars were plated in 24-karat gold.

Which motorcycle maker assembled an early prototype in a ten-by-fifteen-foot backyard shed in Milwaukee?

Harley-Davidson later moved the original shed to its Juneau Avenue factory, where it stood for decades as a tribute to the firm's beginnings.

Which mail service of the American West went bankrupt after only 18 months when the telegraph arrived in 1861?

Pony Express riders cut the time for a message to cross between the coasts to about ten days, yet the business lost money despite a heavy subsidy.

Which crewed car with a rooftop lookout was traditionally coupled to the end of North American freight trains?

Caboose crews kept watch over the wagons ahead for shifting loads and overheating axles. The cars now survive mainly on maintenance trains and heritage lines.

What name is given to a bicycle built to be ridden by two people seated one behind the other?

Tandem describes the seating, one rider behind another, and not the head count: a version built for five people is called a quint.

Which Italian city's main international airport, at Fiumicino, is named after the polymath Leonardo da Vinci?

Rome has flown passengers from Fiumicino since 1960, a year before the airport officially opened. Florence named its own airport after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

What is the name of the notoriously hard street-memorising test that drivers of London's black cabs must pass?

The Knowledge covers 320 set routes through central London and typically takes three to four years to pass, with at least twelve oral exams on the way.

Which country's Darjeeling Himalayan Railway climbs some 2,000 metres using six zigzags and three loops?

India's mountain line, which starts at New Jalpaiguri only about 100 metres above sea level, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

Which country is home to Jungfraujoch, Europe's highest railway station, reached by a tunnel through the Eiger?

Switzerland opened the station in 1912, sixteen years after work began. It stands 3,454 metres up, and most of the line runs inside the mountains to escape snow and storms.

Which airline, founded in 1919, is the world's oldest still operating under its original name?

KLM was granted its royal title by Queen Wilhelmina in September 1919, before the company had even been formally founded. Qantas followed just over a year later.

Which capital opened mainland Europe's first electric underground railway in 1896 to mark a national millennium?

Budapest ran the line under Andrássy Avenue so that no surface tracks would spoil the elegant street, and Emperor Franz Joseph came to open it.

In which present-day state was the golden spike driven in 1869 to complete America's first transcontinental railroad?

Utah was still a territory when Leland Stanford swung at the spike and missed. The telegraph operator flashed the news across the country all the same.

Which American industrialist gave his name to the luxury railway sleeping cars he began building in the 1860s?

George Pullman charged for comfort: each car cost more than five times the price of an ordinary carriage, and his Delmonico of 1868 was the first devoted to fine dining.

Which streamlined blue British locomotive set the world speed record for steam, 126 mph, in July 1938?

Mallard touched the speed for barely a second during a brake trial, and its designer Nigel Gresley would only publish 125 mph. The record has never been beaten.

Which Australian city runs the world's largest operational urban tram network, with about 250 km of double track?

Melbourne also once ran one of the biggest cable tram systems anywhere, opened in 1885, with 75 km of double track and 1,200 gripcars and trailers.

What kind of hillside railway joins two counterbalanced cars by one cable, so one climbs as the other descends?

Funicular engines only have to haul the difference in passenger weight between the two cars, which made the design a cheap way up a steep slope.

Which engineer, who vanished from a steamer on his way to London in 1913, gave his name to a type of engine?

Rudolf Diesel built an engine that needs no spark plug, because the heat of compression alone ignites the fuel. How he came to go overboard from the SS Dresden has never been explained.

Which vet developed the first practical air-filled tyre in 1887 to smooth the ride of his young son's tricycle?

John Boyd Dunlop had no idea that a fellow Scot, Robert William Thomson, had patented an air-filled tyre some four decades earlier.

Which country's colourful jeepney minibuses were first built from surplus US Army jeeps left behind after World War II?

The Philippines got the word by blending jeep with jitney, period slang for a cheap shared taxi. Hundreds of the surplus vehicles were sold or given away as troops left.

Karl Drais's running machine of 1817, regarded as the first bicycle, lacked which part that riders now take for granted?

Pedals only arrived in the 1860s, when cranks were fixed to the front wheel hub. Riders of the earlier dandy horse pushed themselves along with their feet on the ground.

Which car maker's four-ring badge stands for the four firms that merged to form Auto Union in 1932?

Audi shared the badge with Horch, DKW and Wanderer, the other three companies in the merger. The Audi name itself was relaunched in 1965.

What nautical nickname did settlers give the white-topped covered wagons that took them west across America?

Prairie schooner came from the white canvas cover, which looked like a sail crossing a sea of grass. The heavier Conestoga wagon rarely went west of the Missouri River.

Which American test pilot became the first person to break the sound barrier in 1947, flying with two broken ribs?

Chuck Yeager had fallen from a horse two nights earlier and had a civilian doctor tape him up in secret, afraid the injury would cost him the flight in the Bell X-1.

In which country do commuters ride Mi Teleférico, a cable car network strung between La Paz and El Alto?

Bolivia built the lines because the two cities are separated by a steep slope about 400 metres tall and were once joined only by winding, congested roads.

Which roadless jungle region between Panama and Colombia forms the only gap in the 30,000 km Pan-American Highway?

Darién interrupts the road for about 106 km, between Yaviza and Turbo. Environmental organisations and indigenous groups have opposed finishing the missing section.

Which German made over 2,000 glider flights in the 1890s and was credited by the Wright brothers as an inspiration?

Otto Lilienthal died in a gliding crash in 1896. Berlin's Tegel airport later carried his name until it closed in 2020.

Which arid Australian region is crossed by the world's longest dead-straight stretch of railway, about 478 km?

Nullarbor track runs so straight that astronaut Andy Thomas said it shows from space like a very fine pencil line drawn across the desert.

Which Soviet airliner, nicknamed Concordski, made the first flight by a supersonic passenger jet in December 1968?

Tupolev Tu-144 beat its Western rival into the air by two months. Concorde's own first flight had been planned for early 1968 but slipped to March 1969.

Which word did the Royal Navy adopt in 1844 for a ship's left side, because larboard sounded too like starboard?

Port was already the side that faced the quay, because early ships hung their steering oar on the right. At night it carries a red light and the opposite side a green one.

What kind of boat rides on underwater wings that lift its hull out of the water as it gathers speed?

Hydrofoil pioneers included Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone inventor, who began experimenting with the idea in 1908 alongside his chief engineer Casey Baldwin.

What name is given to the mark on a ship's hull that shows how deeply it may legally be loaded?

Plimsoll line honours Samuel Plimsoll, who took up the cause against strong opposition in his 1873 book Our Seamen. His original mark was a circle with a bar through it.

What was the name of the balsa raft on which Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific from Peru in 1947?

Kon-Tiki sailed for 101 days before smashing into a reef at Raroia. Heyerdahl's idea that Polynesia was settled from South America is overwhelmingly rejected by scientists.

What is the Italian name for the public water buses that run scheduled services along the canals of Venice?

Vaporetto could be translated as little steamer, a nod to the steam-driven boats that once did the job. Venice relies on them because there is no room for trains or a metro.

Which twin-hulled boat takes its name from a Tamil term for logs tied together?

Catamaran entered the language in the 1670s as the name of a log raft. The Tamil original described three to seven tree trunks lashed together, with only a single hull.

Which American submarine, the first nuclear-powered vessel, crossed the North Pole beneath the ice in August 1958?

USS Nautilus was sent north as a technological showpiece after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and surfaced near Greenland after 96 hours under the ice.

Which city's Star Ferry has carried passengers across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon since the nineteenth century?

Hong Kong's service began in 1888 as the Kowloon Ferry Company, founded by a Parsee merchant, and took its present name ten years later.

Which narrow boat, driven with a double-bladed paddle, was first used by Inuit, Aleut and Yupik hunters?

Kayak builders each made their own, closely fitted to their body so that it would turn nimbly. The design is believed to be at least 4,000 years old.

Which giant container ship ran aground and blocked the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021?

Ever Given held up more than 300 vessels at both ends of the waterway, and it finally took fourteen tugs to pull her free.

The Scottish railway bridge behind the saying about a never-ending painting job crosses which stretch of water?

Firth of Forth trains have crossed the cantilever bridge since 1890. The saying rests on a mistaken belief that repainting restarted the moment the last coat was finished.