April 26th celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Intermodal Shipping Container.

Here's how Marc Levinson, author of "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger," described the impact of the event in an excellent column in yesterday's Financial Times:

news.ft.com/cms/s/8c05da96-d3f7-11da-b2f3-0000779e2340.html/

It may not be printed in red on your calendar, but April 26 is an important date in economic history. Fifty years ago, the Ideal-X, a war-surplus oil tanker with a steel frame welded above its deck, loaded 58 aluminium containers at a dock in Newark, New Jersey. Five days later, the ship steamed into Houston, Texas, where trucks took on the metal boxes and carried them to their destinations.

via BoingBoing