Brooklyn Bridge opens

May 24, 1883

THIS day, after 14 years of hard labour and the loss of 27 lives, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River is opened, connecting the great cities of New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history. Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan Island turned out to witness the dedication ceremony. Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date.

The Brooklyn Bridge, with its unprecedented length and two stately towers, was dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world.” In 1898, the city of Brooklyn formally merged with New York City, Staten Island, and a few farm towns, forming Greater New York.

WordPress released

May 27, 2003

THIS day, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released WordPress as a fork of b2/cafelog. WordPress is a free and open-source blogging tool and a content management system based on PHP and MySQL. Features include a plug-in architecture and a template system. The license under which WordPress software is released is the GPLv2 (or later) from the Free Software Foundation.