Used non-union labor, too.
Roman roads? Those Russians have been violate patents and copying with out permission ion a very long time.
The Interstate Highway System of its day.
Eisenhower first became interested in building a nationwide system of military roads when he participated in the U.S. Army’s Cross-Country Motor Transport Train in 1919. Most roads then weren’t paved. They were so rough they shook the vehicles apart. Bridges were inadequate and military trucks crashed through them. There were barely any maps of the roads that did exist. The trip from Washington DC to San Francisco took 62 days.
I’m more tired that I thought: I read that headline at least 8 times as “southern Siberia”! Just kept thinking, “the Lost Legion?”
Other than the roads, what did the Romans ever do for us?
I guess everyone has seen this urban semi-legend which both Snopes and Straight Dope say has some truth and some hyperbole.
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is four feet, eight and a half inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the U.S. railroads.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the prerailroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long-distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long-distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of its legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? Roman war chariots made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Thus, the standard U.S. railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches derives from the specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses.”
Funny? Sure. True? Yes and no.