On August 4, 1947, the 10,471 ton Tien Loong was the first steamship owned, managed, financed and crewed by Chinese, to sail from Shanghai to France. And was thus the first such vessel to sail in the Atlantic Ocean. She arrived in Le Havre, France on October 28. Chinese Maritime Trust (a sister company of Island Navigation Corp.) had signed […]
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Tymon Mellor: This article has been extracted from The Kowloon Canton Railway (British Section) Part 4 – The Early Years (1910 to 1940). Major Railway Incidents Each year there were a number of incidents on the railway. Typically there would be a few derailments resulting in some damage, but no major injuries. There were also regular fatalities, normally three or four […]
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HF: Added information “Another adventurer was the Neapolitan aviator, Francesco de Pinedo (1890-1933) who, in 1925, landed his Savioa S-16ter two-seater hydroplane (nicknamed Gennariello) in Hong Kong harbour.|Engineer Ernesto Campanelli from Oristano was his co-pilot. After Hong Kong they flew on to Shanghai, Japan and Australia before returning to Rome landing on the Tiber River. It was truly a remarkable expedition, […]
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This article started life as Q+A 28. New information – see IDJ Jan 2016. Vicky Chan, Lamma resident, asks where Village Vehicles, more usually known as VVs (though there are apparently VWs) are made. She suggests they are so simple in design that the answer must be somewhere in Hong Kong. Is she right? And if so where exactly? They […]
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Hugh Farmer: My earlier article about early plans for trams on HK island stated that the official opening date was 30th July 1904. This is correct. However, The Hong Kong Daily Press of Monday, 15th Aug 1904 states that the full service of the Electric Tramway had begun two days before on Saturday the 13th. It mentions that the cars […]
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IDJ: The majority of engineering projects of all types generally evolve from an idea, to a sketch and move through stages to become physical models that can be discussed, commented on and hopefully approved. These can stretch from major civil engineering projects such as the airport and its infrastructure all the way through to designs for small manufactured consumer goods. The […]
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HF: The following article has been extracted from the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. The article about Ngan Shing-kwan was written by May Holdsworth and Eva Kwok and first published in the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, edited by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn. The publisher, HK University Press, has kindly granted permission for it to be posted here, but retains copyright […]
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Compiled by IDJ Macau, the Portuguese colony forty miles across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong had a surprisingly long aviation history despite no land based airfield or aerodrome until the 1990s. After visits by travelling American showmen-balloonists demonstrating vertical flight in 1891, it was not until 1920 that French born local entrepreneur Charles de Ricou revealed ambitious plans […]
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A Bygone Industry in Hong Kong – Rickshaw Makers’ Stores By Fung Chi Ming The rickshaw is long out of date, but in days past it was a widely used form of urban transport. For public hire and for private use, it also created new employment. The first rickshaw in Hong Kong was of Japanese construction. But, as time went […]
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IDJ has sent an extract from a book by Martin Barnett published in 1984 about the history of tramways in Hong Kong. HF: Chevalier R Pescio was an Italian with an exotic name and an alluring proposal. Namely to build a tramway between Victoria and Aberdeen. He repeatedly tried to obtain government interest in this scheme between 1906 and 1910 […]
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