- On this day in 1870. Tower Subway, the first tube railway in the world, is opened under the Thames River in London. The London Underground is a public electric railway system that runs underground in central London and emerges above ground in the city’s suburbs.
- On this day in 1997. After three days, skiing instructor Stuart Diver is pulled alive from the rubble of the collapsed Thredbo resorts. For three days after the collapse of the Alpine Way in Australia’s high country, Stuart Diver, 27, lay trapped between two concrete slabs, under mud, rubble and snow. 1350 volunteers and specialists in rescue operations worked in shifts around the clock to clear the rubble and find survivors. Diver had been buried for 66 hours and was suffering severe hypothermia and poor circulation. When Diver was finally lifted from his concrete and rubble prison on 2 August 1997, a resounding cheer rang across the mountainside.
- On this day in 1922. Scottish inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, dies. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 3 March 1847. It was whilst living in Canada, from 1870, that Bell pursued his interest in telephony and communications. On 7 March 1876, he was granted US Patent Number 174,465 for “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically …. by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound” – the telephone. Bell an others formed the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877.
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Tower Subway, showing tubular construction with segmental cast-iron rings, 1870 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Portrait of Alexander Graham Bell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Bell on the telephone in New York (calling Chicago) in 1892 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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