Never Mind the Gap



Next time you see the unbelievable movie cliche of a vehicle jumping the gap in a rising drawbridge, you can say, "Not only can that be done, it can be done with a double-decker bus!"

From TIME:

Jan. 12, 1953
Many a motorist has lived through the experience and awakened in his bed to find it was only a bad dream. Last week London Bus Driver Albert Gunter, 46, knew that it was no dream. With 20 passengers in his double-decker bus, Albert was just starting across the draw in London's Tower Bridge, as he had hundreds of times before. Suddenly, he said later, "it seemed as though the roadway in front of me was falling away." Albert started to jam on his brakes. Then he changed his mind."Everything happened terribly quickly," he said. "I realized that the part we were on was rising...

This incident has been commemorated in a mechanical paper model.