Steamtown, U.S.A. was a
steam locomotive museum that ran steam excursions out of
North Walpole, New Hampshire, and
Bellows Falls, Vermont, from the 1960s to 1983. The museum was founded by millionaire seafood industrialist
F. Nelson Blount and was operated by the Steamtown Foundation after his death in 1967. Due to
Vermont's air quality regulations restricting steam excursions, declining visitor attendance, and track use disputes, some of the collection was relocated to
Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1980s and the rest was sold. Steamtown, U.S.A. failed to attract the expected 200,000–400,000 visitors in Scranton and, facing bankruptcy, it sold more of the collection. In 1986, the
U.S. House of Representatives approved funding to begin the process of making it a
National Historic Site. Historical research was carried out by the
National Park Service (NPS) on the remaining equipment. By 1995, Steamtown had been acquired and developed by the NPS as the
Steamtown National Historic Site with a $66 million allocation. Several more pieces have been removed from the collection as a result of the government acquisition. Part of the Blount collection is still on display in Scranton. (
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1862 – The beam of a pumping engine broke at the Hartley Colliery in
Northumberland, England, and fell down the shaft trapping the men below, resulting in the deaths of 204 men.
Three scenes of the legend of the Miraculous Sacrament in stained glass windows in the
Cathédrale of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule, Brussels, by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier (c. 1870). The contributions of Capronnier (1814–1891) helped lead to a revival in glass painting.
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