Category Archives: History

Two Hundred and Sixty Five Years Ago Today

Only one year and 20 days after its establishment as a town, the City of Halifax was almost completely destroyed by a fire 265 years ago today. Everyone remembers the great Halifax Explosion of 1917 when the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship loaded with explosives, collided with the SS Imo, a Norwegian vessel, caught fire, and burst in a cataclysmic explosion that devastated the Richmond District, killed 2,000, and injured another 9,000. But this wasn’t the first time Halifax was nearly destroyed by fire.

The first time was on July 11, 1750 when Halifax recorded the first fire of major proportion in Canada which almost wiped out the entire town. [Sources: Halifax.ca, FireHouse(.com) and Wikipedia] That’s probably why published fire regulations in Halifax date back to September 29, 1752 and
the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Service dates all the way back to 1754 and why Nova Scotia lays claim to a host of first in Canadian firefighting, including:

  • the first hand-propelled fire engine
  • the first steam-propelled fire engine
  • the first motorized pumper

And Halifax came close to being destroyed again in 1786 when a great fire raged in the woods on the outskirt of the city, a fire so great that the town was so enveloped in smoke for many days, as almost to impede business. (Source: History of Halifax City)

In other words, despite the fact that fate apparently wants to burn Halifax to the ground, we Haligonians are tough stock.

One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago Today

One Hundred and Fifty years ago Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published. This classic novel, written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is about a girl name Alice who falls through the rabbit hole into a fantasy world. This book, which is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre ever published, is a seminal work in logic and mathematics, even though it is not traditionally recognized as such.

The author was a mathematician, and unlike Edwin A. Abbott, who, nineteen years later, decided to take a more traditional approach to the creation of a satirical mathematical novella with his (also pseudonymously published) Flatland, he decided to take a
less traditional approach and predate satire with a creative philosophical treaty wrapped in fantasy that, to the average reader, looks like gibberish.

For example, infinitesimal shrinking of distances is how we are taught limits when leaning (pre)calculus. The word play that explains that the semantic value of a sentence is not the same value of the converse talks about the different truth values of a statement, its converse, inverse, and contrapositive. The changing of seats is a reference to a classic combinatorics problem, where the goal is to count seats at the table. (Not to be confused with another famous circular combinatorics problem that is contained in the dining philosophers problem.) And the race gives us an example of the importance of one-to-one mapping if one is trying to get to the finish line and fully define a mathematical system.

It’s a great book, and one that will hopefully stay in publication for another 150 years.

R.I.P. Route 66, Long Live Historic Route 66

Thirty years ago today, U.S. Route 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System, 59 years and 58 days after being named. This highway, which even today is still one of the most famous roads in America, originally stretched for 2,448 miles (3,940 km) from Chicago, Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, California. It was one of the major routes of westward migration and business along the route tended to prosper and do well before it was bypassed by the Interstate Highway System. And it is still so iconic that portions of the route have been designated a National Scenic Byway and some states are adopting bypassed sections into the state road network as State Route 66.

For decades this was a main route for the movement of military equipment in the USA and, especially before the introduction of the interstate highway system, was a major route for trucking companies shipping goods from the coast to the mid-west (as one could get from Los Angeles to Chicago going down only one road). The route was so central to US logistics that there is even a TMS (Transportation Management Services) company that goes by the name Route 66 Logistics.

The history of this route, before, during, and after service and of the historic associations trying to preserve it over the last 30 years is fascinating (and goes well beyond what the younger generation, whose entire knowledge of the route might be from Cars, will remember). If you have the time, check out the linked Wikipedia article and related resources.

Before Panama, There Was Kiel

The Panama Canal might be the best-known man-made artificial waterway, but before the Panama Canal, there was the Kiel Canal, which is the busiest artificial waterway in the world that is a 98km long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein that was officially opened 120 years ago today (even though it wasn’t really finished until the widening project was finished in 1914) and connected the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. This was, and is, an important canal because it saves an average of 460 km and allows ships to avoid dangerous storm-prone seas.
As a point of comparison, the Panama canal, which was initially started in 1881, was put on hold until 1904 when the US took over the project abandoned by France and not opened until August 15, 1914, almost twenty years later.
In shipping and logistics, we take these canals for granted, but most are rather new in the grand scheme of global trade.

Twenty Years Ago Today

The Boeing 777 entered service as the world’s largest twinjet. This particular twinjet had a number of different variants, including the 777 Freighter which was an all-cargo version that had a payload of 103,000 kg (226,000 lbs) and a range of 9,070 km at maximum payload.

While not the capacity of the 747 200F which could handle a MTOW of 378,000 kg, which had a range of about 8,000 kms at full payload, the improved operating economics not only offered new options for long-range, lower-cost air freight.

It was yet another advance in the long line of aircraft advancements leading up to the recent 787 Dreamliner which, despite being a prime example of a supply chain fiasco as chronicled in Supply Chain Digest’s “The Boeing 787 Dreamliner: A tale of TERRIBLE supply chain management”, is still a technological innovation.