Beijing National Stadium broke ground
The National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, is an 80,000-capacity stadium in Beijing. The stadium was jointly designed by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron from Basel-based architecture team Herzog & de Meuron, project architect Stefan Marbach, artist Ai Weiwei, and CADG, which was led by chief architect Li Xinggang. The stadium was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. It was used again in the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The Bird's Nest sometimes has temporary large screens installed at the stands.
Delhi Metro opened
The Delhi Metro is a mass rapid transit (MRT) system serving Delhi and its adjoining satellite cities such as Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurugram, Noida and Bahadurgarh, in the National Capital Region of India. The Delhi Metro network consists of 10 colour-coded lines serving 256 stations with a total length of 350.42 kilometres (217.74 mi). It is the largest and busiest metro rail system in India, and the second oldest after the Kolkata Metro. The system has a mix of underground, at-grade, and elevated stations using both broad-gauge and standard-gauge tracks. The Delhi Metro operates over 2,700 trips daily, starting at around 05:30 and ending at 23:30.
Tangiwai disaster
The Tangiwai disaster occurred at 10:21 p.m. on 24 December 1953 when a railway bridge over the Whangaehu River collapsed beneath an express passenger train at Tangiwai, North Island, New Zealand. The locomotive and the first six carriages derailed into the river, killing 151 people. The subsequent board of inquiry found that the accident was caused by the collapse of the tephra dam holding back nearby Mount Ruapehu's crater lake, creating a rapid mudflow (lahar) in the Whangaehu River, which destroyed one of the bridge piers at Tangiwai only minutes before the train reached the bridge. The volcano itself was not otherwise erupting at the time. The disaster remains New Zealand's worst rail accident.
William Rankine died
William John Macquorn Rankine was a Scottish mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. The Rankine Lectures, organised by the British Geotechnical Association, are named in recognition of the significant contributions Rankine made to: Forces in frame structures; Soil mechanics; most notably in lateral earth pressure theory and the stabilization of retaining walls. The Rankine method of earth pressure analysis is named after him.
