Secrets of the Golden Gate Bridge

From the gigantic shell mounds built by the earliest inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay area to the building of the 'bridge that couldn't be built' and the fifty years following its completion, Secrets of the Golden Gate Bridge is a humorous history lesson of one of the greatest wonders of the modern world. There is something magical about the Golden Gate Bridge, something that tugs at the impulsive spirit, giving birth to the hidden desire to do something weird. On May 27th, 1937, 18,000 people waited in the cool San Francisco morning for the bridge to officially open. By day's end, 200,000 had walked, crawled, run, danced, skipped, jumped, hopped, and sat on every square inch of the new bridge. And the weirdness didn't end that day. For the next 50 years, the bridge has seen all manner of stunt performed over its span. Parachuting off the towers, bungee jumping off the side, scaling the suspension cables dressed in monkey suits, and yes, ending one's life, the bridge has seen it all. It even has its own ghost. Enjoy facts, figures and comparisons? You'll find them here. If all the rivets needed for construction of the Golden Gate Bridge were placed head to toe, they would form an enormous serpent 37 miles in length. It would take 106 Bactrian camels, each standing upon the humps of the one below, to equal the height of one of the towers. And within those seemingly solid towers, the weight of which is equal to the weight of 114 747 jumbo jets, you would find 23 miles worth of ladders connecting you over 90 different routes. It required a 26-page manual just to navigate the maze.

Author Bio E. J. Knapp was born during a thunderstorm in Detroit, Michigan several years before the Motor City discovered fins. Raised in a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood, he morphed into the stereotypical hoodlum a teenager growing up on the west side of Detroit was expected to be. Dropping out of high school at sixteen, he hit the road in his 1960 Chevy and has, in one way or another, been rolling down that road ever since. Throughout his life he has been a paper boy, a bagger in a grocery store, a roofer, a forestry ranger trainee, a military screw-up, an auto mechanic, a factory worker, a long haul trucker, a professional college student, a peer counselor in a street clinic, an ice cream truck driver, an audio/visual technician, a professional photographer and a computer geek. He has published numerous short stories in various on-line magazines. He is also the author of the novel Stealing The Marbles and Meter Maids Eat Their Young published by Rebel e Publishers. He is currently back in Detroit with his various critters in a house he bought for a ridiculously small amount of cash.