On this day, November the 13th, in the year of 1927, the Holland Tunnel, the first tunnel to facilitate vehicular transportation under the Hudson River, connecting Jersey City with New York, opened for traffic.

Named after the tunnel’s main engineer, Clifford Milburn Holland, Holland was instrumental in allowing the tunnel to exist, thanks to the ventilation system he designed to get out of pollution and to pull in fresh air (Port Authority NY NJ) (ASCE) (Britannica).

It is thought that Holland’s cause of death, a heart attack, was brought upon by stress resulting from the project (Hagerty).