This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue here with our American stories.

And our next story comes to us from a man who is simply known as the History

Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy has also heard here regularly on our American stories. The Brooklyn Bridge

represented the growth and might of the industrial Age and the coming of age of the United States and its largest city.

Here's the history guy with the story.

May 24th, 1883, one of the great marvels of the Industrial Age was open to the public for the very first time.

A procession of 24 coaches, first one of which

carried U.S. President Chester Arthur and New York City Mayor Franklin Edson, across the 6,000, 16-foot

suspension bridge, one and a half times longer than any suspension bridge that had been built

to that time, across the East River between New York City on Manhattan Island and Brooklyn

on Long Island. The headline of the New York Times that day Island and Brooklyn on Long Island.

The headline of the New York Times that day read two great cities united,

although the Times gave it relative opinion of those two great cities the next day

when they mentioned that the residents of Brooklyn would be happy to avoid a sometimes difficult ferry ride,

but the residents of New York City had no great cause for celebration

as not one in a thousand of them would ever find occasion to use the new structure.

The carriage carrying President Arthur and Mayor Edson was not actually the first carriage

to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

That event had occurred ten days earlier, and the honor of being the first to cross

the bridge in a carriage went to Emily Warren Roebling, wife of the chief engineer.

...