At just over 3,300 feet in length, the Forth Road Bridge is hardly the longest, but it is one of the most historic ones, tracing its roots back to the 11th century. That was when Margaret, queen consort of King Malcolm III established a ferry crossing at the site of the current bridge (so rose the towns of Queensferry and North Queensferry, which still exist, some eight centuries later). When the bridge was finally built, it took three centuries of lobbying nearly a decade of parliamentary consideration, and then six years of construction.

On this day, September 4 history, the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland opened to traffic. As one of the busiest crossings in Scotland, it carries around 32,000 cars daily.

Calls for a bridge began in earnest in the 1700s, but were mollified for a while with an increase of ferry service. But as the population grew, so did calls for an established road. In 1947 a committee set up to investigate the possibility of over-water crossing decided to look into an underwater tunnel instead. But that idea was abandoned as too ambitious, and the bridge construction began in 1958.