Last summer, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter expanded immensely extending into two Florida theme parks, Universal Orlando and the Universal’s Islands of Adventure. The original Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Hogsmeade was located at the Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park. However, Universal converted its Jaws theme park area that is located within Universal Orlando into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley which was opened to the public last summer. To get from one park to the other you need to run through a brick wall and enter onto platform 9¾ and board a full scale Hogwarts Express that is equipped with steam and whistle. Just like in the movie. Unlike in the movie, this journey takes only seven minutes. But the journey is full of other…

By Samuel Phineas Upham Spanning the expanse of the Tanana River is the 700-foot engineering marvel of the Mears memorial bridge. It’s one of the largest simple truss-type bridges in the world, and it was built by the Alaska Engineering Commission. The commissions constructed the bridge as the final link in the great expanse of railroad snaking through the region. The railroad was pivotal to the Alaskan economy, and the bridge became something of a battleground. The bridge was declared publicly owned, a response to the American distrust of monopolistic practices. The Alaskan Syndicate, headed by JP Morgan and Simon Guggenheim, quickly came to hold some of the most key producers for Alaska. They acquired copper mines, stretches of railroad, steamship and salmon packing operations. As a result, a large…