The winds were blowing at 40 mph (64 km/h) across the Tacoma Narrows strait when “Galloping Gertie” began to bounce. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which connected Tacoma, Washington, with the Kitsap Peninsula, had opened to great fanfare just a few months earlier, in July 1940.
The elegant and flexible structure — at the time, the third-longest suspension bridge in the world — had been designed by world-renowned bridge engineer Leon Moisseiff, who also helped design the Golden Gate Bridge. Yet, from the beginning, workers noticed the bridge’s oscillation in the wind, nicknaming it “Galloping Gertie.”
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