FreightWaves Classics

FreightWaves Classics articles look at various aspects of the transportation industry’s history.

 

Thursday, January 11, 2024

How Australia lost a war with emus

After World War I, veterans took up farming and provided food supplies and wheat to Western Australia. But when emus began to threaten that supply chain, another war broke out. The emus won.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Top 10 FreightWaves Classics of 2023

FreightWaves Classics aims to highlight the most interesting and sometimes unique stories throughout the history of transportation and freight. This year we found so many compelling stories; here are some of the most read from 2023.

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Friday, October 20, 2023

The most haunted US highways

Deputy Editor Brielle Jaekel and 3PL expert Mary O’Connell tell stories of haunted highways to celebrate Halloween on the latest episode of Tracks Through Time.

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Thursday, October 12, 2023

How Australia lost a war with emus

After World War I, veterans took up farming and provided food supplies and wheat to Western Australia. But when emus began to threaten that supply chain, another war broke out. The emus won.

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Thursday, September 21, 2023

Lessons from the 1947 Texas City port disaster

: In 1947, tragedy struck the port in Texas City, Texas, where a French ship carrying highly flammable fertilizer caught fire and caused devastation to the port town. But the lessons learned from the disaster likely saved lives in the years following, according to the latest episode of Tracks Through Time.

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Thursday, September 7, 2023

Disappearance of Flight 19 remains a mystery

In December 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a routine training mission known as Flight 19. They were to navigate to various points in the Atlantic Ocean and return to base. But as Tracks Through Time explores, the seemingly mundane exercise turned into one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history.

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Friday, June 30, 2023

Where did the ZIP code come from?

ZIP codes are a big reason our postal system works today, but it took years and a cartoon for the system to actually be adopted. Where did the coding system come from and why was it introduced?

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Thursday, June 29, 2023

What happened to the Mary Celeste crew?

In 1872 the British brigantine Mary Celeste was discovered adrift in the Atlantic Ocean without any damage but missing its crew. Author Valerie Martin discusses some of the theories behind what happened and her research into “The Ghost of the Mary Celeste,” a nonfiction book about the case, on this episode of Tracks Through Time.

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Thursday, June 15, 2023

Tragic crash of US Navy airship

In 1933, 75 U.S. Navy members died when the airship USS Akron crashed and sank into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey. Naval History and Heritage Command’s Caroline Johnson tells the story.

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Thursday, May 18, 2023

Battalion 6 Triple 8 – An untold story from WWII

Black women in the U.S. Army during WWII made up the 6888 battalion, whose sole job was to handle the mail for American soldiers. Their story has been largely ignored for decades – until now. Hear their story and learn about their impossible feats from a historian close to the project.

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Friday, May 12, 2023

History captured in Wright Brothers’ photographs

The Wright Brothers are two of the most influential people in history, changing not only transportation but the entire world with their flying machine. Take a look at some of the glass plate negatives of photographs of their work and personal lives taken between 1898 and 1911.

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