Transit driver appreciation day

Transit Driver Appreciation Day was originally Bus Driver Appreciation Day. It was started 18 March 2009 by Hans Gerwitz and Shannon E. Thomas on the anniversary of the first “bus” line, started in Paris. A bus lane or bus-only lane is a lane restricted to buses, often on certain days and times, and generally used to speed up public transport that would be otherwise held up by traffic congestion. Bus lanes are a key component of a high-quality bus rapid transit (BRT) network, improving bus travel speeds and reliability by reducing delay caused by other traffic. A dedicated bus lane may occupy only part of a roadway which also has lanes serving general automotive traffic; the related term busway describes a roadway completely dedicated for use by buses.

The world’s first designated bus lane was created in Chicago in 1940. The first bus lanes in Europe were established in 1963 in the German city of Hamburg, when the tram system was closed and the former segrated tram tracks were converted for bus travel. Other large German cities soon followed, and the implementation of bus lanes was officially sanctioned in the German highway code in 1970. Many experts from other countries (Japan among the first) studied the German example and implemented similar solutions. On 15 January 1964 the first bus lane in France was designated along the quai du Louvre in Paris and the first contraflow lane was established on the old pont de l’Alma on 15 June 1966.

On 26 February 1968 the first bus lane in London was put into service on Vauxhall Bridge. The first contraflow bus lane in the UK was introduced in King’s Road, Reading as a temporary measure when the road was made one-way (eastwards to Cemetery Junction) on 16 June 1968. The initial reason was to save the expense of rerouting the trolleybus, which was due to be scrapped on 3 November of that year. However the experiment proved so successful that it was made permanent for use by motor buses. By 1972 there were over 140 kilometres (87 mi) of with-flow bus lanes in 100 cities within OECD member countries, and the network grew substantially in the following decades. The El Monte Busway between El Monte and Downtown Los Angeles was the first dedicated busway in the US, constructed in 1974. In 2014 the name was changed to Transit Drivers Appreciation Day in order to include rail operators, but not drivers of Ford Transit Mini Buses, and it is now observed by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) in the United States and Canada

Other events and holidays happening on 18 March
Awkward Moments Day
National Biodiesel Day
National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day
Transit Drivers Day

Rudolf Diesel

Famous for inventing the Diesel engine, the German inventor and mechanical engineer Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was born 18 March 1858 in Paris, France. Only few weeks after his birth, Diesel was given away to a Vincennes farmer family, where he spent his first nine months. When he was returned to his family, they moved into the flat 49 in the Rue Fontaineau-Roi. When he wad young Rudolf Diesel worked in his father’s workshop delivering leather goods to customers using a barrow. He attended a Protestant-French school and soon became interested in social questions and technology. When he was 12-year-old Diesel received the Société l’Instruction Elémentaire bronze medal and had plans to enter Ecole Primaire Supérieure in 1870.

However At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian in 1870 his family was forced to leave, as were many other Germans. They settled in London, England, where Diesel attended an English school. Then Diesel’s mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle, Barbara and Christoph Barnickel, to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbeschule (Royal County Vocational College), where his uncle taught mathematics. At the age of 14, Diesel wrote a letter to his parents saying that he wanted to become an engineer. After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg. Two years later, he accepted a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich.

One of Diesel’s professors in Munich was Carl von Linde. Diesel was unable to graduate with his class in July 1879 because he fell ill with typhoid fever. While waiting for the next examination date, he gained practical engineering experience at the Gebrüder Sulzer Maschinenfabrik (Sulzer Brothers Machine Works) in Winterthur, Switzerland. Diesel graduated in January 1880 with highest academic honours and returned to Paris, where he assisted his former Munich professor, Carl von Linde, with the design and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant. Diesel became the director of the plant one year later. In 1883, Diesel married Martha Flasche, and continued to work for Linde, gaining numerous patents in both Germany and France.

In early 1890, Diesel moved to Berlin with his wife and children, Rudolf Jr, Heddy, and Eugen, to assume management of Linde’s corporate research and development department and to join several other corporate boards there. Diesel diversified beyond the field of refrigeration, and began working with steam, researching thermal efficiency and fuel efficiency leading him to build a steam engine using ammonia vapour. Sadly this exploded hospitalising him and causing long-term health problems

So Benz began designing a safer and more efficient engine based on the Carnot cycle, and in 1893, soon after Karl Benz was granted a patent for his invention of the motor car in 1886, Diesel published a treatise entitled Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren [Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine to Replace the Steam Engine and The Combustion Engines Known Today] which formed the basis for his invention of the Diesel engine.

Diesel understood thermodynamics and the theoretical and practical constraints on fuel efficiency. He knew that as much as 90% of the energy available in the fuel is wasted in a steam engine. His work in engine design was driven by the goal of much higher efficiency ratios. Following his experiments with a Carnot cycle engine, he developed it further and obtained a patent for his design for a compression-ignition engine. In his engine, fuel was injected at the end of compression and the fuel was ignited by the high temperature resulting from compression. The Diesel engine has the benefit of running more fuel-efficiently than gasoline engines due to much higher compression ratios and longer duration of combustion. Diesel was interested in using coal dust or vegetable oil as fuel, and his engine was run on peanut oil. Between 1893 and 1897, Heinrich von Buz, director of MAN AG in Augsburg, gave Rudolf Diesel the opportunity to test and develop his ideas.

On the evening of 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the GER steamer SS Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing company in London, England. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin and was never seen alive again. Then Ten days later, the crew of the Dutch boat Coertzen came upon the corpse of a man floating in the North Sea near Norway. the crew retrieved personal items (pill case, wallet, I.D. card, pocketknife, eyeglass case) from the corpse and On 13 October, these items were identified by Rudolf’s son, Eugen Diesel, as belonging to his father. Then On 14 October 1913 it was reported that Diesel’s body was found at the mouth of the Scheldt by a boatman. Shortly after Diesel’s disappearance, his wife Martha opened a bag that her husband had given to her just before his ill-fated voyage, with directions that it should not be opened until the following week. She discovered 200,000 German marks in cash (US$1.2 million today). There are many theories concerning Diesels disappearance including suicide or murder, however evidence is limited and his disappearance and death remain unsolved.

Following Diesel’s tragic and unexplained death, his engine underwent much development and became a very important replacement for the steam piston engine in many applications. Because the Diesel engine required a heavier, more robust construction than a gasoline engine, it saw limited use in aviation. However the Diesel engine was widely used in stationary engines, agricultural machines, submarines, ships, locomotives, trucks, and in modern automobiles and thanks to his pioneering work He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1978.

Chuck Berry

American guitarist, singer and songwriter Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry sadly died March 18, 2017. He was born October 18, 1926 and is considered one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as “Maybellene” , “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Rock and Roll Music” and “Johnny B. Goode”, Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

He was Born into a middle-class family in St. Louis, Missouri, and Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded “Maybellene” — Berry’s adaptation of the country song “Ida Red” — which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues chart.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry’s Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act — after having transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Never Can Tell,” and “Nadine,” but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid in cash led to a jail sentence in 1979 — four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry has a long lasting legacy and his influence on modern music can still be felt today. He was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.” He is also included in several Rolling Stone “Greatest of All Time” lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry’s songs: “Johnny B. Goode,” “Maybellene,” and “Rock and Roll Music.”

Johnny Appleseed🍏🍎🍏🍎

pioneering nurseryman and conservationist John Chapman a.k.a Johnny Appleseed sadly died 18 March 1845. He was born 26 September 1774 In Leominster Massachusetts, and his birth is commemorated as Johnny Appleseed Day. his birthplace now has a granite marker, and the street is called Johnny Appleseed Lane. Chapman’s mother, Elizabeth, tragically died in 1776 shortly after giving birth to a second son, Nathaniel Jr., who died a few days later. His father, Nathaniel, who was in the military, returned in 1780 to Longmeadow, Massachusetts where, in the summer of 1780, he married Lucy Cooley. When he was 18-year-old, John persuaded his 11-year-old brother Nathaniel Cooley Chapman to go west with him in 1792. The duo apparently lived a nomadic life until their father brought his large family west in 1805 and met up with them in Ohio. The younger Nathaniel decided to stay and help their father farm the land.

Shortly after the brothers parted ways, John began his apprenticeship as an orchard tender under a Mr. Crawford, who had apple orchards, thus inspiring his life’s journey of planting apple trees He became well known through this region by his eccentricity, and the strange garb he usually wore. He followed the occupation of a nurseryman, and has been a regular visitor here upwards of 10 years. He was a native of Pennsylvania we understand but his home—if home he had—for some years past was in the neighborhood of Cleveland, where he has relatives living. He is supposed to have considerable property, yet denied himself almost the common necessities of life—not so much perhaps for avarice as from his peculiar notions on religious subjects. He was a follower of Swedenborg and devoutly believed that the more he endured in this world the less he would have to suffer and the greater would be his happiness hereafter—he submitted to every privation with cheerfulness and content, believing that in so doing he was securing snug quarters hereafter.In the most inclement weather he might be seen barefooted and almost naked except when he chanced to pick up articles of old clothing.

The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apple seeds randomly everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery. He planted his first nursery on the bank of Brokenstraw Creek, south of Warren, Pennsylvania. Next, he seems to have moved to Venango County, along the shore of French Creek, many of these nurseries were also in the Mohican area of north-central Ohio. This area included the towns of Mansfield, Lisbon, Lucas, Perrysville, and Loudonville.

He preached the gospel as he traveled, He would tell stories to children and spread The New Church gospel to the adults, receiving a floor to sleep on for the night, and sometimes supper, in return. During his travels he converted many Native Americans, whom he admired. The Native Americans regarded him as someone who had been touched by the Great Spirit, and even hostile tribes left him alone. He also cared very deeply about animals, including insects. he had a wolf that had started following him after he healed its injured leg. he also bought a horse When he heard that it was to be put down, so, bought a few grassy acres nearby, and turned it out to recover. When it did, he gave the horse to someone needy, provided he treat it humanely. He introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as the northern counties of present-day West Virginia. More controversially, he also planted dogfennel during his travels, believing that it was a useful medicinal herb. However It is now regarded as a noxious, invasive weed.

During his later life, he was a vegetarian.He never married. He thought he would find his soulmate in heaven if she did not appear to him on earth. He always carried with him some work on the doctrines of Swedenborg with which he was perfectly familiar, and would readily converse and argue on his tenets. Despite the privations and exposure he endured, he lived to an extreme old age, not less than 80 years at the time of his death—though no person would have judged from his appearance that he was 60. “He became an American legend while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples. He was also a missionary for The New Church (Swedenborgian).

The site of his grave is also disputed. Developers of the Canterbury Green apartment complex and golf course in Fort Wayne, Indiana, claim that his grave is there, marked by a rock. That is where the Worth cabin sat in which he died.41°6′36″N 85°7′25″W. Such was-his legend that he inspired many museums and historical sites such as the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio, and the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center in Ashland County, Ohio. The Fort Wayne TinCaps, a minor league baseball team in Fort Wayne, Indiana, wh Chapman spent his final years, is named in his honor.