May 27 · This Day in America
Before a single car is allowed across, the people get it for a day. On Pedestrian Day, some two hundred thousand of them stream onto the new Golden Gate Bridge on foot and on roller skates, out over the strait that engineers had insisted could never be bridged — too deep, too windy, too violent a tide. Joseph Strauss and his crews spent four years proving them wrong, stringing the longest suspension span on earth across the mouth of San Francisco Bay, its towers vanishing into Pacific fog. It would hold that record until 1964. But the number that matters is the one from this first morning: a city walking out into the air over the sea, on something they had decided, together, to build. The bridge is still the first thing the ocean shows you on the way in.
Source: www.goldengate.org
Also on this day · 1942
Aboard a carrier at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz pins the Navy Cross on Doris "Dorie" Miller — the first Black sailor to receive it. At Pearl Harbor on December 7, the mess attendant had carried wounded men to safety, then manned an anti-aircraft gun he was never trained to fire. The Navy he served still barred men like him from combat roles. He stood at attention anyway, and the country had to look at what it had been refusing to see.
Source: department.va.gov
“This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race, and I'm sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts.”Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, 1942