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Complex Numbers #1000643 added December 22, 2020 at 12:11am
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Tunnels Aren't Boring, or Are They?
History is cool and never really boring, unless you approach it like my teachers did in school, with endless memorization of dates that shit happened, without any context. I think it takes some experience and lifelong learning to be able to have a syncretic approach to historical events.
That is, with the possible exception of December 22nd, which, while Wikipedia lists a whole slew of events that took place  on this day in history, it turns out that nearly every single one of them is yawn-inducing.
For example:
 1920 – The GOELRO economic development plan is adopted by the 8th Congress of Soviets of the Russian SFSR.
Who did what to which now?
1965 – In the United Kingdom, a 70 mph speed limit is applied to all rural roads including motorways for the first time.
And so? A dozen years later, the US adopted a 55 mph speed limit, and our roads are straighter, wider, and feature driving on the correct side.
1891 – Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using photography.
I mean, two of the few subjects that interest me more than history are photography and astronomy, and this is still meh.
1807 – The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.
If there is anything more boring than international trade negotiations, I haven't discovered it.
It is true that, per the link above, some cool shit happened too, like the reopening of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, but there really isn't much there for me to want to write about. Even the births and deaths lists are largely boring. Also, can the dates really be trusted before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar?
But if I had to pick one -- and I don't, really, but it's only polite to address the prompt -- I'm going to go with one related to civil engineering.
1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.
...which led to a traffic jam that persists to this day.
The Lincoln Tunnel is an approximately 1.5-mile-long (2.4 km) tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting Weehawken, New Jersey, to the west with Midtown Manhattan in New York City to the east.
Can I just point out how much sheer fun it is to say "Weehawken?" I do that every time I go through the Lincoln Tunnel, which may help to explain why I'm single.
Turns out that the 1937 date is just for one of the current three tubes of the tunnel:
Construction of the central tube, which originally lacked sufficient funding due to the Great Depression, started in 1934 and it opened in 1937. The northern tube started construction in 1936, was delayed due to World War II-related material shortages, and opened in 1945. Although the original plans for the Lincoln Tunnel called for two tubes, a third tube to the south of the existing tunnels was planned in 1950 due to high traffic demand on the other two tubes. The third tube started construction in 1954, with the delay attributed to disputes over tunnel approaches, and opened in 1957.
I would have hated to be the guy supervising the construction of the other tubes while the first one was in operation. "Now, don't screw this up or you'll flood the tunnel."
The tolls on each crossing are only collected in the New York-bound direction.
That's because if you charged people to go into New Jersey, no one would go into New Jersey.
As of 2016, both directions of the tunnel carry a combined average of 112,995 vehicular crossings every day.
Mostly at the exact same time I'm trying to cross.
The article goes on to describe the tunnel's specifications and the negotiations leading up to its construction, which I find fascinating but everyone else would probably feel about it the way I feel about trade negotiations, so I'll skip most of the commentary on it.
Officials from the federal, state, and city levels were in attendance at the ceremony on the New York side, where New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore wielded picks to dig up the ceremonial first mound of dirt.
Personally I think it would have been better if the governors had done most of the work themselves. You know, give them something to do besides trade negotiations.
The first tube was formally dedicated on December 21, 1937. The opening ceremony was accompanied by a military parade on the New Jersey side, as well as the detonation of a series of aerial bombs launched from military ships.
'Muricans gonna 'Murica.
The first vehicles began passing through the tube at 4:00 AM the next day.
Look, I know the construction crews most likely drove vehicles through the tunnel before that, but still, imagine being the first family through a new tunnel bore. "Hey, look, Mildred. Is that... a crack? Leaking water?"
Due to the limited capacity of the new tube, heavy trucks were temporarily banned, and a minimum speed limit of 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) was imposed until a second tube could be completed.
The current minimum speed is 0 mph and the max is about 3. Hell, Google usually routes me to the GWB instead. At least that way I get a view of something besides 80-year-old tunnel walls. |
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