September 15

There is absolutely nothing about Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, O. J. Simpson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Senator Larry Craig, Global Warming, destruction of the rain forests or the proposed deforestation of the Pacific Northwest anywhere in this entry.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first inter-city railway. It operated, oddly enough, between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester in England. After making it over several engineering hurdles, not the least of which was figuring a way to get a very large, very heavy train across a bog without having the locomotive and rail cars sinking into it, work progressed surprisingly quickly. After clearing all the other obstacles, service commenced on September 15, 1830. At one point on the inaugural run, the train came to an unexpected stop. William Huskisson, a Member of Parliament for Liverpool, seized this as an opportunity to schmooze with his fellow passenger the Duke of Wellington, who also happened to be England’s Prime Minister. Huskisson spoke to the Prime Minister from the roadbed next to Wellington’s carriage. Apparently, the conversation must have been riveting for the two men because neither of them noticed that another train was approaching on a parallel track. Huskisson was struck by the approaching train and seriously injured. He was loaded on to the train that had just hit him and rushed to a hospital but died later that day. That must have put a bit of a damper on the party celebrating the railway’s opening. There are unconfirmed reports that Huskisson’s last words were “No problem, he’s got plenty of room to get by.”