Golden Gate Bridge: Historie og fakta

The golden gate bridge is connecting the two sides of San Francisco Bay. It was built in the ages 1933-1937, the main architect Joseph Strauss. The bridge was official opened 28 may 1937. The big challenge was to have the bridge to resist earthquakes and hurricanes, the solution was that the bridge was constructed as a suspension bride, and it can sway up to 8,25m, so the bridge not will collapse if there was a big earthquake. Many people in San Francisco were satisfied. The bridge is hanging in 129.00 km wire, it’s enough to reach three times around equator. The bridge is 1970 m long, and the span is 1280 m, the pillars are 230 m in the high. The bridge had the longest span in the world until 1964; it was superseded by Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York. In USA in the 30’ties it was a “rule” that for every one million dollars spend on the building, one man would died, because of the low work safety. The bridge was estimated to cost about 35 million dollars, so they thought about 35 would die in the building period. But luckily “only” 11 men died. The historic low dead count was because there was a big focus on work safety. There was a big safety net under the whole bridge, many workers talked about jumping into the net, just for fun. But there was a rule, that if you jump into the net without a reason, you would have been fired right ahead. After the bridge was done the architect Joseph Strauss, the city council gave him free bridge access for the rest of his life. And Strauss also received international recognition for the work, many thought was impossible in their lifetime. But suddenly a year after the bridge was done; he died of a heart attack, so the lifelong bridge access, was turned into a year access. Nowadays the bridge is very famous, both for its history but also for its very special colours and the light that shines every night. Today over 1.9 billion vehicles has past the Golden Gate Bridge. But the bridge also have a very black history, many people have committed suicide on the bridge. There are so many people that commit suicide on Golden Gate, so the government in California brought a permanent safety net on the bridge, so it can prevent suicides on the bridge in the future.