97 Fun Facts About Bridge

Which president's White House telegraph signal opened the Golden Gate Bridge to cars in 1937?

Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the signal at noon on 28 May 1937; the day before, some 200,000 people had been let across on foot before a single car was allowed.

What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?

International Orange was architect Irving Morrow's choice: it blends with the hills around the strait yet stands out to ships in the bay's fog.

Which design style shaped the Golden Gate Bridge's towers, streetlights and railings?

Art Deco details came from architect Irving Morrow, after chief engineer Joseph Strauss's first plan, a hybrid of two bridge types, was dropped for a pure suspension bridge.

Which 1964 New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title as the world's longest suspension span?

Verrazzano-Narrows honours the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, yet a contract error left the bridge's name one z short until New York corrected it in 2018.

Which annual event has started on the bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn since 1976?

The New York City Marathon left Central Park in 1976 for a course through all five boroughs, so runners now set off from Staten Island and cross the bridge first.

Which waterway does the Brooklyn Bridge cross?

The East River is not a river at all but a tidal strait; the Brooklyn Bridge became its first fixed crossing in 1883.

Which engineer completed the Brooklyn Bridge, assisted by his wife Emily, after his father John died?

Washington Roebling was crippled by decompression sickness from the caissons, so he directed the work from his Brooklyn apartment while Emily carried his instructions to the site.

How did P. T. Barnum show doubters that the Brooklyn Bridge was safe?

He led 21 elephants across it in May 1884, a year after a panic on the bridge crushed twelve people to death on its stairs.

Tower Bridge in London combines suspension spans with what kind of opening central section?

Bascules, the two lifting leaves, rose more than 6,000 times in the bridge's first year for a busy port; now that river traffic has thinned, they open far less often.

What did driver Albert Gunter do in 1952 when Tower Bridge began opening under his bus?

Jumped the gap: he accelerated, and his number 78 landed on the far leaf, which had not yet started to rise; he was rewarded with £10 for his bravery.

What is the Sydney Harbour Bridge's nickname?

The Coathanger owes its nickname to its great steel arch, a shape chosen because it was cheaper and could carry heavier loads than the design first approved.

How many hand-driven rivets hold the Sydney Harbour Bridge together?

All Australian-made, and the last was driven through the deck on 21 January 1932.

At Sydney Harbour Bridge's opening in 1932, an intruder beat the premier to the ribbon, slashing at it with what?

A sword: Captain Francis de Groot of the paramilitary New Guard cut in ahead of Premier Jack Lang; he was arrested, and Lang went on to cut the ribbon and open the bridge.

Turkey's 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, the world's longest suspension span since 2022, crosses which strait near Gallipoli?

The Dardanelles crossing is built of dates: its 2,023-metre main span marks the Turkish Republic's centenary in 2023, and the 1915 in its name recalls an Ottoman naval victory in the strait.

China's Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, the world's longest since 2011, carries what?

A high-speed railway: the viaduct lifts the Beijing-Shanghai line over the rice paddies and wetlands of the Yangtze delta, and the same line crosses another of the world's longest bridges, the 114 km Langfang-Qingxian viaduct.

Which British architect designed France's Millau Viaduct, long the world's tallest bridge?

Norman Foster designed it with French engineer Michel Virlogeux; the steel road deck was assembled on land and then pushed out across the seven piers.

Who occupied the shops on Florence's Ponte Vecchio before a Medici decree handed them to goldsmiths?

Butchers and tanners traded there until the stench reached the Medici corridor that runs above the shops; a decree then reserved the bridge for goldsmiths and jewellers.

Which bridge was the only one across Venice's Grand Canal until the 1850s?

Rialto Bridge was built by Antonio da Ponte after a design competition; for more than 250 years, crossing the canal anywhere else meant taking a gondola ferry.

Venice's Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace with what?

The New Prison stood across a narrow canal from the palace courtrooms; the bridge's famous name dates only from the Romantic period, from the idea of prisoners sighing at a last glimpse of the lagoon.

By legend, Charles IV laid the first stone of Charles Bridge in 1357 on 9/7 at 5:31 because the digits form what?

A palindrome: year, day, month and time read 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1, odd numbers climbing to nine and back down, which the emperor is said to have chosen to give the bridge strength.

The Øresund Bridge links Sweden with which country?

Denmark: from Sweden the bridge runs to the artificial island of Peberholm, then road and railway dive into a tunnel beside Copenhagen's airport, which keeps its flight paths clear.

Scotland's Forth Bridge, opened in 1890, is what type of railway bridge?

Cantilever was the cautious choice: a suspension bridge was already being built there when its designer's Tay Bridge collapsed in a storm in 1879, and his plan was abandoned.

A bridge opened over the River Severn in Shropshire in 1781 was the world's first major bridge made of what?

Cast iron: Abraham Darby III's ironworkers had no precedent for building in the material, so they joined the parts like timber, with dovetails and other carpenters' joints.

The Pont du Gard in southern France was built by the Romans to carry what?

Water to Nîmes ran through a channel almost 50 km long; when it fell out of use, the bridge survived the Middle Ages because it earned tolls as a river crossing.

What nickname did construction workers give the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge for how it moved in the wind?

Galloping Gertie bucked in even light winds and tore itself apart four months after opening; ever since, big bridge designs have been tested in wind tunnels.

What was the only life lost when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940?

A dog left in a car: Tubby, a cocker spaniel, was too frightened to move and nipped the professor who went back to coax him out moments before the span fell.

The Mackinac Bridge, nicknamed the 'Mighty Mac', is in which US state?

Michigan's two peninsulas were linked only by ferries until 1957; designer David Steinman, mindful of the Tacoma Narrows collapse, gave the bridge deep stiffening trusses against the wind.

Why does Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel dive under the water at two points along its 17.6 miles?

To keep shipping lanes open: the road drops into mile-long tunnels between four artificial islands, so cargo ships and the Navy's fleet from Norfolk sail over the traffic.

Canada's Confederation Bridge links the mainland to which island?

Prince Edward Island was promised a year-round link when it joined Canada in 1873, but winter ice kept stopping the ferries; islanders voted for a bridge in 1988 and it opened in 1997.

An 1830s London Bridge was bought in 1968 by Robert McCulloch and rebuilt in which US state?

Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the bridge's granite, each block numbered, shipped and fixed over a new concrete core; the tale that the buyers thought they were getting Tower Bridge is a discredited rumour.

The 55 km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, opened in 2018, crosses the mouth of which river?

Pearl River estuary drivers face a quirk: Hong Kong and Macau drive on the left, but the bridge counts as mainland road, so everyone has to switch to the right.

Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia, was renamed after which event?

The failed coup of 15 July 2016 began with rebel soldiers blocking the bridge; ten days later the government renamed it the 15 July Martyrs Bridge for those killed resisting them.

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge over the Tyne was the first bridge in the world to do what?

Tilt: its two arches pivot together as one piece, the deck rising into a second arch so boats can pass beneath, a motion likened to an eye slowly opening.

Which Ottoman bridge in Bosnia was destroyed by shelling in 1993 and reopened in 2004?

Stari Most in Mostar had spanned the Neretva since 1566 when artillery brought it down; an international team rebuilt it, and local divers once again leap from the top of its arch.

Vietnam's Golden Bridge near Da Nang, opened in 2018, appears to be held up by what?

Two giant stone hands appear to lift the walkway from the hillside, but they are fibreglass over wire mesh, made to look like carved stone.

Lucerne's Kapellbrücke, one of Europe's oldest covered bridges, was badly damaged by what in 1993?

A fire in August 1993 destroyed much of the bridge and most of its 17th-century gable paintings; it was rebuilt within months, but only 30 of the pictures could be fully restored.

Greece's Arkadiko Bridge, still crossable after some 3,300 years, was built by which Bronze Age civilisation?

The Mycenaeans stacked huge unworked boulders without mortar on their road between Tiryns and Epidaurus, and local people still use the bridge today.

In the card game contract bridge, how many players sit at the table?

They play in two partnerships, partners sitting opposite each other, with a standard 52-card deck.

Which American railroad heir set out the rules of contract bridge in 1925?

Harold Vanderbilt set out his scoring in 1925, and within a few years it had pushed auction bridge aside; he was also the yachtsman who won the America's Cup three times.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge is based on a design by which Victorian engineer?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's design beat one by Thomas Telford, but he died in 1859 with the bridge unfinished; fellow engineers completed it in 1864 as his memorial.

The 24-mile Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the world's longest continuous bridge over water, is in which US state?

Louisiana protested in 2011 when Guinness gave 'longest bridge over water' to a Chinese bridge, so Guinness split the record in two and the causeway kept the 'continuous' title.

Si-o-se-pol, the 'bridge of thirty-three spans', crosses the Zayanderud in which Iranian city, once the Safavid capital?

Isfahan became Shah Abbas I's capital in 1598, and his general Allahverdi Khan built the bridge within a few years as the shah remade the city on a grand plan.

Wales's Pontcysyllte, completed in 1805 by Telford and Jessop, is the world's highest what?

Canal aqueduct: instead of stepping boats down and up the Dee valley through locks, Thomas Telford carried the waterway straight across in an iron trough on tall stone piers.

What is the structural height of the Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge for 20 years?

Engineer Michel Virlogeux led the design with Norman Foster; the cable-stayed crossing of the Tarn valley opened to traffic in December 2004.

Kolkata's Howrah Bridge was officially renamed in 1965 after which Nobel laureate?

Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet and first Asian Nobel laureate, gave the bridge its official name, Rabindra Setu, yet Kolkata still calls it Howrah Bridge.

The five arches of Japan's Kintai Bridge, first built at Iwakuni in 1673, are made of what?

Wood: the arches were rebuilt on a fixed schedule for centuries, and when a typhoon flood swept the bridge away in 1950, after 276 years, the town built it again.

Before Portugal's 1974 revolution renamed it, Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge honoured which man?

António Salazar, the dictator whose regime built it, had his name on the bridge from 1966; its new name is the date in 1974 when a military coup overthrew that regime.

Which Australian film star worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before finding fame on television?

Paul Hogan was a bridge rigger when he first appeared on the amateur talent show New Faces in 1971, fifteen years before 'Crocodile Dundee' made him a worldwide name.

What kind of vehicle leapt a gap in London's Tower Bridge in 1952 when the roadway began rising beneath it?

A double-decker bus on route 78 made the jump when driver Albert Gunter decided in a split second to accelerate, and the City Corporation rewarded his bravery with £10.

What bird did Emily, the chief engineer's wife, carry on the first carriage ride across the Brooklyn Bridge?

A rooster rode along as a sign of victory, after Emily had spent more than ten years relaying her bedridden husband's instructions to his assistants.

In the Norwegian fairy tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, what kind of creature lurks beneath the bridge?

A troll threatens to eat each goat in turn, but the two smaller brothers talk their way past and the biggest tosses him into the stream with his horns.

Christmas Island built a five-metre-high bridge over a road so that millions of which animals could migrate safely?

Red crabs carpet the island every wet season as they march from its interior to the sea to breed, so rangers also fence busy roads and funnel them into underpasses.

Which star of 'Lawrence of Arabia' once ranked among the world's top fifty contract bridge players?

Omar Sharif called the game his personal passion, and in 1967 he formed the Omar Sharif Bridge Circus, a touring team of professionals who played exhibition matches.

Which Impressionist painted the Japanese footbridge over the water-lily pond in his garden at Giverny again and again?

Claude Monet made the pond after settling at Giverny in 1883, and in 1900 he exhibited a first group of garden pictures devoted mainly to the bridge.

Which nickname did the Glienicke crossing between Berlin and Potsdam earn during the Cold War?

Bridge of Spies stuck after the first swap there in 1962, when the Soviet agent Rudolf Abel was traded for Gary Powers, the pilot of a downed American U-2.

The covered bridges of Madison County, made famous by a 1992 novel and a Clint Eastwood film, are in which US state?

Iowa is where Robert James Waller, on leave from his teaching job, set out to photograph Madison County's bridges and came away with the idea for his bestselling romance.

A popular myth says which scientist built Cambridge's wooden Mathematical Bridge without using any nuts or bolts?

Isaac Newton could not have been involved: he died in 1727, twenty-two years before the bridge was built at Queens' College to a design by William Etheridge.

Charles Bridge, lined with thirty baroque statues, has crossed the Vltava since the Middle Ages in which capital city?

Prague relied on it as the only way over the river until 1841, and every statue on it is a replica, with the originals moved indoors to a museum.

Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge in town spared from destruction in World War II, spans the Arno in which Italian city?

Florence is thought to have bridged the Arno's narrowest point since Roman times, and locals have long said the old bridge survived the war on Hitler's express order.

Which southern French city's ruined medieval bridge, the Pont Saint-Bénézet, is celebrated in a famous children's song?

Avignon kept only four arches of the bridge that once crossed the Rhône, and the song's modern version comes from a comic opera first staged in 1853.

Poohsticks, the game of dropping twigs from a bridge into a stream, first appeared in a 1928 story by which author?

A. A. Milne is thought to have first played it with his son on a Sussex footbridge since renamed Poohsticks Bridge, and a world championship began on the Thames in 1984.

Which duo's final studio album, 'Bridge over Troubled Water', won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1971?

Simon & Garfunkel saw it top the charts in more than ten countries and finish as the best-selling album of 1970, 1971 and 1972.

Contract bridge is a direct descendant of which older English trick-taking game, long the favourite of card players?

Whist was dominant for centuries, and the first known bridge rule book, written in 1886 by an English financier in Constantinople, called its game a Russian form of it.

In contract bridge, which player's cards are laid face up on the table and played by their partner?

Dummy puts the hand down only after the opening lead, and from then on has few rights, taking no part in choosing which card to play.

Which billionaire investor, a regular bridge partner of Bill Gates, sponsored a cup match bearing his own name in 2006?

Warren Buffett was said to spend about twelve hours a week on the game, with the champion player Sharon Osberg as another of his regular partners.

Which Romantic poet gave Venice's Bridge of Sighs its English name, translating the Italian 'Ponte dei Sospiri'?

Lord Byron's translation caught on so widely that bridges around the world have been nicknamed after it, and Offenbach used the name for an 1861 opera.

What name did nineteen Golden Gate Bridge workers adopt after a safety net saved them from fatal falls?

Half Way to Hell Club members were the lucky ones: months before the opening, a falling scaffold tore through the same net and ten men were killed.

Which Alabama city's Edmund Pettus Bridge was the scene of 'Bloody Sunday', an attack on civil rights marchers in 1965?

Selma has seen efforts to rename the bridge, built in 1940 and named for a Confederate general and Klan leader, with the march leader John Lewis proposed instead.

Which US senator drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, in an accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne?

Ted Kennedy survived, and the wooden Dike Bridge became an unwanted tourist attraction, visited by thousands each year and picked at by souvenir hunters.

The Old North Bridge, where militia routed British regulars on the Revolutionary War's first day, stands in which town?

Concord saw about 400 minutemen and militia face roughly 90 British soldiers there, and the bridge on the spot is a replica put up in 1956.

Which Scottish leader fought alongside Andrew Moray to defeat an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297?

William Wallace and Moray waited until as many English soldiers had filed over the bridge as they believed they could beat, then attacked before the rest could follow.

Which Roman emperor defeated his rival Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome in AD 312?

Constantine saw Maxentius drown in the Tiber during the rout, and the victory set him on the path to becoming sole ruler of the Roman Empire.

'The Bridge on the River Kwai' is set in wartime Thailand, but in which country was the film actually shot?

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, hosted the shoot near Kitulgala, and the film went on to win seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.

The 'bridge too far' of Operation Market Garden in September 1944 crossed the Lower Rhine at which Dutch city?

Arnhem saw some 740 British paratroopers under John Frost hold one end of the bridge for days, and the crossing rebuilt there after the war bears his name.

Which Baltimore crossing collapsed in March 2024 after the container ship Dali lost power and struck one of its piers?

Francis Scott Key Bridge spans fell while a maintenance crew was repairing potholes on the roadway, and six of the workers were killed.

Which mathematician proved in 1736 that no walk could cross each of Königsberg's seven bridges exactly once?

Leonhard Euler saw that only the sequence of crossings mattered, not the route taken on land, and in showing it he laid the foundations of graph theory.

Which winged creature of West Virginia folklore was later linked by author John Keel to the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse?

Mothman sightings around Point Pleasant ran for thirteen months and ended on the day the bridge fell, a disaster engineers traced to a single cracked eyebar.

Which term for bidding and winning all thirteen tricks in bridge was later borrowed by tennis, golf and baseball?

Grand slam started as card-table jargon and reached tennis in 1933 through a sportswriter's comparison; taking twelve of the thirteen tricks is only a small slam.

Which shape do engineers repeat along the sides of a truss bridge because it stays rigid when its sides are fixed?

Triangle frames cannot change shape unless a side changes length, which is why the simplest truss is a single one and a classic bicycle frame joins two.

Which capital's Széchenyi Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, was the first permanent bridge over the Danube in its country?

Budapest owes the bridge to Count István Széchenyi, who pushed for it, an English engineer who designed it and an unrelated Scottish namesake who built it.

Which Renaissance artist designed a single-span bridge over the Golden Horn for the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II?

Leonardo da Vinci's single span was never built for the sultan, but a small-scale version of his design finally went up in Norway in 2001.

Which French engineer's company built Porto's Maria Pia railway bridge in 1877 and then the Garabit Viaduct?

Gustave Eiffel won the Porto job with by far the cheapest bid, and the Garabit Viaduct that followed had the world's longest arch when it was finished in 1884.

Villagers in Peru rebuild Q'eswachaka, the last remaining Inca rope bridge, every June using cables made of what?

Grass ropes prepared by family groups from four communities are bound into cables at the site each year, even though a modern bridge stands close by.

What did the British Army order troops to do on bridges after one collapsed under a marching column in 1831?

Break step became the rule after 74 riflemen marching four abreast felt Broughton Suspension Bridge vibrate in time with their feet, then give way and injure twenty of them.

In which Ian Fleming novel does James Bond use a stacked deck to beat the cheating Hugo Drax at bridge?

Moonraker grew from a screenplay too short for a full novel, so Fleming added the card game at M's club, where Bond wins £15,000, about seven times his salary.

Which San Francisco eccentric, self-styled 'Emperor of the United States', decreed that a bridge be built to Oakland?

Joshua Norton had already 'abolished' Congress by decree in 1859, and a plaque dedicated in 1939 honours his call for the bridge that finally opened in 1936.

Which American bridge authority, widely known as 'Mr. Bridge', hosted a television show on the game from 1959 to 1964?

Charles Goren built his teaching on the 4-3-2-1 point count, and by 1958 he was earning about $150,000 a year and had been profiled in a Time cover story.

What name is given to the pressurised boxes in which Brooklyn Bridge workers dug out the tower foundations underwater?

Caissons take their name from a French word for a box, and the compressed air inside them left numerous workers dead or permanently injured by decompression sickness.

Rome's Ponte Sant'Angelo, lined with Bernini's angels, was built by which emperor to reach his own mausoleum?

Hadrian completed it in AD 134 as the Pons Aelius, named from his family name, and the tomb it served is the towering Castel Sant'Angelo.

Which trophy, first contested in 1950, goes to the winners of bridge's oldest world championship for national teams?

Bermuda Bowl is a name taken from the Atlantic archipelago that hosted the first tournament, and the championship has since settled into being played every two years.

Which Spanish architect designed Seville's Alamillo Bridge and Dublin's harp-like Samuel Beckett Bridge?

Santiago Calatrava balanced the Seville deck with a single tower leaning back 32 degrees, a concept traced to his own sculpture of stacked marble cubes held by a taut wire.

Myanmar's U Bein Bridge, built around 1850 with timber reclaimed from a former royal palace, is made of which wood?

Teak posts, 984 of them originally, were hammered seven feet into the lake bed to carry the 1.2-kilometre footbridge, believed to be the oldest of its kind.

At which 2018 multi-sport event did contract bridge players from fourteen nations compete for medals?

Asian Games organisers staged the bridge events at an exhibition centre in Jakarta, where 213 players competed over twelve days.

Which bridge term for a hand with no card above a nine honours an English earl who bet against it?

Yarborough hands would have won £1,000 from the 19th-century earl, who collected £1 every time a player was dealt anything better.

Which Scottish poet, lampooned as the worst in British history, wrote an 1880 lament for the Tay Bridge disaster?

William McGonagall had praised the new railway bridge in verse more than a year before it fell, and he wrote about 200 poems in all.

Thomas Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge, completed in 1826, links the mainland of Wales with which island?

Anglesey islanders made their living selling cattle, and before the bridge the animals had to be driven into the strait and made to swim to the mainland markets.

Which American author won a Pulitzer Prize for 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', about a rope bridge collapse in Peru?

Thornton Wilder made it his second novel and the best-selling work of fiction of 1928, tracing what brought five people onto the bridge at the moment it fell.