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Cedar Hill Yard, c. 1977

Cedar Hill Yard is a railroad classification yard in New Haven, North Haven, and Hamden, Connecticut, in the United States. It was built by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in the early 1890s in and around New Haven's Cedar Hill neighborhood, which gave the yard its name. Following an expansion begun in 1917, and further improvements in the 1920s, Cedar Hill Yard became one of the largest rail yards in the United States, routinely handling more than 4,000 railroad cars each day on 880 acres (360 ha) of land. After the rise of trucks and highways, and rerouting of rail traffic to newly built Selkirk Yard in the state of New York, Cedar Hill Yard significantly declined in importance and much of it was abandoned, as ownership was transferred to Penn Central in 1969, and subsequently Conrail in 1976. Since 1999, the yard has been owned and operated by CSX Transportation, and also hosts operations by Amtrak, the Connecticut Southern Railroad, and the Providence and Worcester Railroad. (Full article...)

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Taras Bulba

... that in the history of opera in Ukraine, Mykola Lysenko's historical Taras Bulba (title character pictured) was the first grand opera, but not performed during his lifetime because he refused a performance in Russian?
... that before he made his Major League Baseball debut, Nate Fisher worked as a commercial lending analyst for the First National Bank of Omaha?
... that a two-year-old food bank contributed 150 semi-trucks of supplies to relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina?
... that Michelle O'Bonsawin is the first Indigenous person appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada?
... that Bob Dylan's "4th Time Around" has been interpreted as a parody of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"?
... that the Romans would advertise their goods with a type of inscription known as Titulus pictus?
... that Univision bought a Chicago TV station that wasn't for sale?
... that prolific Italian forger Tobia Nicotra once toured the United States impersonating conductor Riccardo Drigo, who had died two years earlier?

In the news

Mikhail Gorbachev

A stabbing spree in Saskatchewan, Canada, leaves ten people dead and fifteen others injured.
A UN report concludes that China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, including violence against the Uyghur people.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured) dies at the age of 91.
Floods in Pakistan kill more than 1,300 people and over 700,000 livestock.

On this day

September 5: Labour Day in Canada and Labor Day in the United States (2022)

Battle of the Chesapeake

917 – Liu Yan declared himself emperor, establishing the state of Southern Han at his capital of Panyu (present-day Guangzhou) in southern China.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: French naval forces handed Britain a major strategic defeat at the Battle of the Chesapeake (depicted).
1915 – The Zimmerwald Conference, the first of three international socialist conferences forming the Zimmerwald movement, opened in Switzerland.
1943 – World War II: American and Australian airborne forces landed at Nadzab as part of the New Guinea campaign against Japan.
1977 – NASA launched the space probe Voyager 1, currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Caspar David Friedrich (b. 1774)
Jochen Rindt (d. 1970)
Neerja Bhanot (d. 1986)

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Locomotive on the Thamshavn Line

The first three mainline systems of the Norwegian railway network to be electrified were private ore-hauling lines. The Thamshavn Line (locomotive pictured) opened in 1909, and remained in revenue use until 1973, after which it was converted to a heritage railway. It is the world's oldest remaining alternating-current railway and the only narrow-gauge railway in the country to be electrified. It was followed by Norsk Transport's Rjukan and Tinnoset Lines two years later, and Sydvaranger's Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line in 1922. The Norwegian State Railways' (NSB) first electrification was parts of the Drammen Line in 1922 and the ore-hauling Ofoten Line in 1923, which connects to the Iron Ore Line in Sweden. The use of El 1 locomotives on the Drammen Line proved a large cost-saver over steam locomotives, and NSB started electrifying other lines around Oslo. During the 1940s, NSB electrified the Sørland Line, although the final section from Egersund to Stavanger was not converted until 1956. The 1950s saw the electrification of several regional and commuter lines around Oslo. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Trundholm sun chariot is a Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered in Denmark. It is a representation of the sun chariot, consisting of a bronze statue of a horse and a large bronze disk, which are placed on a device with spoked wheels. The sculpture was discovered with no accompanying objects in 1902 in a peat bog on the moor of Trundholm, on the peninsula of Odsherred in the northwestern part of Zealand. The artifact is now in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Sculpture credit: unknown; photographed by the National Museum of Denmark

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