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The Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge was the world's first working railway suspension bridge. It spanned 825 feet (251 m) and stood 2.5 miles (4.0 km) downstream of Niagara Falls from 1855 to 1897. Connecting Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York, the bridge carried mixed traffic on its two decks across the Niagara River; trains crossed over the river by way of the bridge's upper deck while pedestrians and carriages used the lower. The Suspension Bridge was part of Canadian politician William Hamilton Merritt's vision to promote trade within his country and with its neighbor the United States. On March 18, 1855, a fully-laden passenger train drove across the upper deck at 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h), and officially opened the completed bridge. Its success proved that contrary to general opinion a safe and operational railway suspension bridge was tenable, and allayed concerns induced by the 1854 collapse of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge. The Suspension Bridge was finally replaced by the Steel Arch Bridge, which was later renamed the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, on August 27, 1897. (more...)

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• 1542 – Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo became the first European to set foot on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California.
• 1571 – The Ottoman Empire was decisively defeated by the Christian West for the first time, as a multinational fleet led by Don John of Austria crushed the Turkish navy near the Gulf of Corinth in the Battle of Lepanto (painting by Paolo Veronese pictured).
• 1868 – Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA opened, with an initial enrollment of 412 students the next day.
• 1949 – East Berlin and the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany became the German Democratic Republic.
• 1958 – Attempting to control the political instability in Pakistan, President Iskander Mirza suspended the 1956 constitution, imposed martial law, and cancelled the elections scheduled for January 1959.