1 July 1894 London’s most iconic bridge, Tower Bridge opens with great fanfare with a crowd of thousands, members of the Royal Family, the blare of trumpets and the booming of canons from the Tower of London.
Hannah Griggs was supposed to have been the first woman to have worked there.
26 January 1933 During 1933 and for years thereafter San Francisco Bay will be the scene of two tremendous bridge-building operations. The Golden Gate Bridge will run north and south near the mouth of the Golden Gate itself. The second one, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, will run approximately east and west across a much larger part of San Francisco Bay, from the city of San Francisco to Oakland, and will be one of the most formidable engineering tasks ever attempted.
16 August 1958 The new Forth Road bridge in Scotland will span the Firth of Forth, connecting Edinburgh to Fife and will replace a centuries-old ferry service.
17 August 1965 The medieval Pont Saint-Bénézet, also known as the Pont d’Avignon, has been in ruins for years and various schemes are being discussed to preserve it. The bridge is well known thanks to the 15th century French song Sur le Pont d’Avignon.
8 June 2000 A sabre of light, a sprung structure of filigree lightness, Lord Foster’s Millennium Bridge spanning the River Thames between St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London and Tate Modern opens. It had to close to the public two days later as the crowds made the structure sway.
3 February 2013 A trip to see London Bridge...in Arizona. In 1971 Robert P McCulloch bought London Bridge and shipped it to a small desert town. But, as our writer finds, the pre-Victorian masterpiece is very much at home on the Colorado River in the heart of Mojave County.
14 August 2017 The controversial London Garden Bridge project, championed by actor Joanna Lumley, finally collapses in acrimony, costing £37m of public money.
18 October 2017 The world’s first 3D-printed bridge opens to cyclists in Netherlands.
