PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL

Philadelphia City Hall serves as the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It houses the chambers of the Philadelphia City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. It is also a courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, and houses the Civil Trial and Orphans' Court Divisions of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. Built of brick, white marble, and limestone, Philadelphia City Hall is the world’s largest free-standing masonry building. The weight of the building is borne by granite and brick walls up to 22 feet thick. The building structure used over 88 million bricks and thousands of tons of marble and granite. The building was constructed from 1871 to 1901. Designed to be the world’s tallest building, it was surpassed during construction by the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower. Upon completion of its tower in 1894, it became the world’s tallest habitable building. It was also the first secular building to have this distinction, as all previous world’s tallest buildings were religious structures, including European cathedrals and – for the previous 3,800 years – the Great Pyramid of Giza. With almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the largest municipal building in the United States. FUN FACT: In the 1950s, the city council investigated tearing down City Hall for a new building elsewhere. They found that the demolition would have bankrupted the city due to the building’s masonry construction. SEE ALSO: William Penn Statue

NORTHSIDE OF PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL
By Toniklemm - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81012838

COURT AVENEUE – BELFONTAINE, OHIO

Court Avenue is a small street in downtown Bellefontaine, Ohio, located adjacent to the Logan County Courthouse. First paved in 1893, it is known for being the first street in the United States to be paved with concrete. Court Avenue is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

LOOKING WESTWARD ON COURT AVENUE

By Nyttend - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8801219

LINOLEUM

Linoleum was invented by Englishman Frederick Walton in 1855. At first Walton called his invention “Kampticon”, which was deliberately close to Kamptulicon, the name of an existing floor covering, but he soon changed it to Linoleum, which he derived from the Latin words “linum” (flax) and “oleum” (oil). Walton opened the American Linoleum Manufacturing Company in 1872 on Staten Island. It was the first U.S. linoleum manufacturer, but was soon followed by the American Nairn Linoleum Company in 1887 (later the Congoleum Corporation of America), in Kearny, New Jersey. Walton was unhappy with Michael Nairn & Co’s use of the name Linoleum and brought a lawsuit against them for trademark infringement. However, the term had not been trademarked, and he lost the suit. The court opined that even if the mane had been registered as a trademark, it was by now so widely used that it had become generic, only 14 years after its invention. It is considered to be the first product name to become a generic term.

FIRST PLACE IN THE UNITED STATES NAMED "TEXAS".

The first place in the United States named Texas was Texas County, Missouri, which was organized and named ten months before the Republic of Texas was admitted as a state in the union. Houston is the county seat of Texas County, Missouri. It was founded in 1857 and named after Sam Houston. Texas County is the largest county by area in Missouri, but Houston is not its largest city. Houston is the second largest city in the county. The largest city is Cabool, which was named after the capital of Afghanistan by a railroad engineer who thought Missouri looked like Afghanistan, where he had earlier worked on a British railroad project. In a somewhat related matter, Texas County, Oklahoma (named after the State of Texas) is the second largest county by land area in Oklahoma, and the State of Texas (aka "Baja Oklahoma")is the second largest state by land area in the U.S.

FIRST HIGHWAY TRAVEL INFORMATION CENTER (AKA WELCOME CENTER)

U.S. route 12 is an east-west highway running from Aberdeen, Washington to Detroit, Michigan, for almost 2,500 miles. As from the earliest days of its existence, US 12 enters Michigan from Indiana, southwest of New Buffalo and continues to the old junction of US 12 and US 112 in New Buffalo. On May 4, 2004, the Michigan Department of Transportation designated 209 miles of US 12 from New Buffalo to Detroit as a Historic Heritage Route. NOTE: Your humble blogger visited the New Buffalo Welcome Center on August 2, 2019.

BYD DELIVERING THE WORLD’S LARGEST ELECTRIC BUS FLEET

BYD Co Ltd (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese manufacturer of automobiles, battery-powered bicycles, buses, forklifts, rechargeable batteries and trucks. The city of Shenzhen has become the first city to electrify 100 percent of its public buses – that is a total of 16,539 buses! According to the latest reports, worldwide the number of electric buses increased in 2018 by 32 percent to about 425,000. Of those, 421,000, a share of 99 percent are in China. Europe has around 2,250 electric buses and the U.S. a meager 300. Video below is drone footage of largest ever delivery of electric buses to the city of Shenzhen at the end of 2015.

SPIRAL ESCALATORS

A spiral escalator is a special design type of escalator in the form of a spiral/helical with curved steps. This escalator can curve to the left or right. The first spiral/helical escalator was developed and sold by Mitsubishi Electric in 1985. Since that time, Mitsubishi Electric has continued to be the only manufacturer to offer spiral escalators for indoor use. The first spiral escalator was installed at the International Exhibition Center in Osaka, Japan. The largest order of spiral escalators was the Shanghai New World Daimaru in Shanghai, China. A total of 12 units were installed in 2015.

SPRIAL ESCALATOR INSTALLATIONS IN THE U.S.
BUILDING	LOCATION	YEAR INSTALLED
San Francisco Center	San Francisco, CA	1988
The Forum Shops at Caesars	Las Vegas, NV	2003
Wynn Las Vegas	Las Vegas, NV	2004

FIRST USE OF A PAINTED CENTER LINE ON A ROADWAY

In the United States, the first documented use of a painted center line was in 1911 along Trenton’s River Road in Wayne County, Michigan. The idea of using a painted center line was conceived in 1911 by Edward N. Hines, the chairman of the Wayne County, Michigan, Board of Roads, after watching a leaky milk wagon leave a white trail along a road. In 1917, the idea of using painted center lines on rural state highways was conceived and/or put into action in at least three states; Michigan, Oregon and California, apparently completely independent of one another.

“Dead Man’s Curve” along the Marquette-Negaunee Road in Marquette County, Michigan, shown in 1917 with its hand-painted center line.

FIRST "SCENTED" BILLBOARD

The first "scented billboard", an outdoor sign emitting the odors of black pepper and charcoal to suggest a grilled steak, was erected on NC 150 near Mooresville, North Carolina by the Bloom grocery chain. The sign depicted a giant cube of beef being pierced by a large fork that extended to the ground. The scents were emitted between 7–10 am and 4–7 pm from May 28, 2010 through June 18, 2010.

WORLD'S FIRST TWO-SIDED BUILDING

The Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building, located on Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Connecticut is the world's first two-sided building. It is known locally as the “Boat Building”. It was completed in 1963 and is home to The Phoenix Companies.

Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut

"THE STACK"

The Four Level Interchange (also known as “The Stack”, but officially named the Bill Keene Memorial Interchange) was the first stack interchange in the world. Completed in 1949 and fully opened in 1953 at the northern edge of Downtown Los Angeles, it connects U.S. route 101 (Hollywood Freeway and Santa Ana Freeway) to State Route 101 (Harbor Freeway and Arroyo Seco Parkway). The interchange is officially named in memory of Los Angeles traffic and weather reporter Bill Keene.
LEVEL 1	Curved ramps for those changing from the 110 to the 101
LEVEL 2	Main trunk of the 110, named the Arroyo Seco Parkway north of the interchange and the Harbor Freeway south of it
LEVEL 3	Arcing flyover ramps carrying traffic from the 101 to the 110
LEVEL 4	Main trunk of the 101, named the Hollywood Freeway to the west and the Santa Ana Freeway to the east

THE FOUR LEVEL INTERCHANGE AS SEEN FROM ABOVE IN 1959

WORLD'S FIRST TELEVISION COMMERCIAL

On July 1, 1941, at 2:29 p.m., the first television commercial appeared on screens in the U.S. The shaky, 10-second spot for Bulova, a New York-based watch company, aired right before a Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies baseball game and cost $9.

THEODORA SMAFIELD - FIRST WINNER OF THE PILLSBURY BAKE-OFF

The Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest was introduced in 1949 in honor of Pillsbury’s 80th birthday. Originally called the “Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest,” 1949’s inaugural Bake-Off received thousands of entries from across the country. Pillsbury Best flour was a required ingredient in all recipe submissions and there were six categories that participants could enter: breads, cakes, pies, cookies, entrees and desserts. If participants submitted a seal from the Pillsbury Best flour they used in the recipe, their prize money could be doubled. A panel of Pillsbury home economists eventually narrowed the entries down to 100 finalists. Each finalist was invited to the live competition at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City to make their recipe in hopes of winning the $25,000 grand prize. ·         Of the 100 finalists invited to compete at the first Bake-Off, just three were men. One of the male finalists’ recipes was called “Quick Man-Prepared Dinner.” ·         Before contestants could prepare their recipes, electricians installed 100 oven stations in a Waldorf-Astoria ballroom. In order to power all those ovens, the hotel actually had to tap into the electrical supply for the New York City subway system! ·         The first contest’s winning recipe was No-Knead Water-Rising Twist, created by Theodora Smafield of Rockford, Illinois. Smafield was awarded $50,000 for her recipe, which called for the unique rising technique of wrapping dough in a tea towel and submerging it in warm water. ·         The original $25,000 grand prize doubled for Smafield since she submitted her package seal from Pillsbury Best flour. The remaining $20,000 was divided among the other eight finalists.

A beaming Smafield accepts her $50,000 grand prize check at the inaugural Bake-Off Contest in 1949 

SYLACAUGA METEORITE

On November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell in Oak Grove, Alabama (near Sylacauga). The meteorite, which became known as the “Sylacauga Meteorite” is the first documented extraterrestrial object to have injured a human being in the USA. The grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a frame house, bounced off a large wooden console radio, and hit Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (1920-1972) while she napped on a couch. The 34-year-old woman was badly bruised on one side of her body but able to walk. The event received worldwide publicity.

Elizabeth Fowler Hodges

MAJOR WILBERT D. "DOUG" PEARSON - FIRST PILOT TO SHOOT DOWN A SATELLITE

On September 13, 1985, Major Wilbert D. “Doug” Pearson became the first pilot to shoot down a satellite. Major Pearson, flying the “Celestial Eagle” F-15A, launched an ASM-135 ASAT about 200 miles west of Vandenberg Air Force Base and destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite flying at an altitude of 345 miles. Prior to the launch the F-15 flying at Mach 1.22 executed a 3.8g zoom climb at an angle of 65 degrees. The ASM-13 ASA was automatically launched at 38,100 feet while the F-15 was flying at Mach .934. The 30 pound MHV collided with the 2,000 pound Solwind P78-1 satellite at a closing velocity of 15,000 mph.

An F-15 Eagle launches the ASM-135 during the final test, which destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite

WHAT ARE THE ODDS? AIRBAG DEPLOYMENT

The first known accident between two airbag-equipped automobiles took place in 1990 in Virginia. A 1989 Chrysler LeBaron crossed the center line and hit another 1989 Chrysler LeBaron in a head-on collision, causing both driver airbags to deploy. The drivers suffered only minor injuries despite extensive damage to the vehicles

STAPLE BEND TUNNEL - JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

The Staple Bend Tunnel, about 4 miles east of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a town called Mineral Point, was the first railway tunnel constructed in the United States.

The tunnel was constructed between 1831 and 1834 for the Allegheny Portage Railroad and is 901 feet in length. It is rock bored and stone lined.

The Staple Bend Tunnel was the 3^rd tunnel of any kind built in the U.S.; the first two tunnels were for canals in Pennsylvania.

The tunnel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994, and in 2001 became part of the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service. The tunnel is now open to the public for use as part of the Staple Bend Tunnel Trail.

A view of the abandoned tunnel c.a. 1911. A man stands to the left for a height comparison,

FIRST GAS STATION

On Saturday, December 1, 1913, what is today the Gulf Oil Company opened the nation’s first drive-in gas station. Located at the intersection of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in Pittsburgh, the filling station was a simple but pleasing structure, with a cantilevered pagoda-style roof to shelter the pumps, cars and station attendants. Supporting the roof was a storage room and a restroom for staff only. Before this innovation, gasoline was dispensed from sometimes awkwardly located pumps at such places as grocery and hardware stores, and even some pharmacies.

In the ensuing 105 years, some of this earlier practice has come full circle. Nationwide, there are around 111,000 gas stations today. The vast majority — nearly 97,000 — are combined with convenience or food mart stores.

https://www.census.gov/library/audio/profile-america/profileeven/profile-even-01.html

ABBEVILLE, ALABAMA

Abbeville, Alabama is the first city alphabetically, both by city and state, in the Rand McNally Road Atlas.

MARGARET ANN NEVE - SUPERCENTENARIAN

MARGARET ANN NEVE
BORN	St. Peter Port, Guernsey – May 18, 1792
DIED	Guernsey, U.K. – April 4, 1903
AGE	110 Years, 321 Days
FIRST	Recorded female supercentenarian
FIRST	Proven individual whose life spanned 3 centuries; 18th – 20th
SECOND	Person to reach the age of 110

Margaret Ann Neve