Construction began on July 1, 1965 at a ceremony attended by national leaders. The most controversial legacy of the initial subway line was the demolition of Beijing‘s historic inner city wall to make way for the subway. Construction plans for the subway from Fuxingmen to the Beijing railway station called for the removal of the wall, as well as the gates and archery towers at Hepingmen, Qianmen, and Chongwenmen. Leading architect Liang Sicheng argued for protecting the wall as a landmark of the ancient capital. Chairman Mao favoured demolishing the wall over demolishing homes. In the end, Premier Zhou Enlai managed to preserve Qianmen gate and its arrow tower by slightly altering the course of the subway.
  The initial line was completed in time to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of the People‘s Republic on October 1, 1969. It ran 21 km from the army barracks at Fushouling to the Beijing railway station and had 16 stations. This line forms parts of present-day Lines 1 and 2. It was the first subway to be built in China, and predates the metros of Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, San Francisco and Washington D.C., but technical problems would plague the project for the next decade.
  On November 11, 1969, an electrical fire killed 3 people, injured over 100 and destroyed two cars. Premier Zhou Enlai placed the subway under the control of the People’s Liberation Army in 1970, but reliability problems persisted. On January 15, 1971, the initial line began operation on a trial basis between the Beijing railway station and Gongzhufen. A single ride fare was set at 0.10 yuan and only members of the public with credential letters from their work units were permitted entry into the subway.
 On September 15, 1981, after a decade of trial operation, the initial line was finally opened to full public use. Investment in the project totalled 706 million yuan. The subway was placed under the management of Subway Company, then a subsidiary of the Beijing Public Transportation Company. Annual use reached 72.5 million in 1982.
  On September 20, 1984, a second line was opened to the public. This horseshoe-shaped line was created from the eastern half of the initial line and corresponds to the southern half of the present-day Line 2. It ran 16.1 km from Fuxingmen to Jianguomen with 16 stations.
  On January 26, 1991, planning began on the eastward extension of Line 1 under Chang’an Avenue from Fuxingmen with the receipt of a 19.2 billion yen low-interest, development assistance loan from Japan. Construction began on the eastern extension on June 24, 1992.
  On June 9, 2008, the use of paper tickets, hand checked by clerks for 38 years, was discontinued and replaced by electronic tickets that are scanned by automatic fare collection machines upon entry to and exit from the subway. Stations are equipped with touch-screen vending machines that sell single-ride tickets and multiple-ride Yikatong fare cards.
  On July 19, 2008, Line 10, the Olympic Branch Line and the Airport Line were opened on a trial basis ahead of the Summer Olympic Games in August. With the addition of the three new lines, total use rose by 75% in 2008 to 1.2 billion.
  After the Chinese government announced a major economic stimulus package in November 2008, the Beijing urban planning commission further expedited subway building plans, especially for surface light railways to suburban districts that are cheaper to build. In December 2008, the commission moved forward completion dates of the Yizhuang and Daxing Lines to 2010 from 2012, finalised the route of the Fangshan Line, and unveiled the Changping and Western Suburban Lines.

(A)

Alexander von Humboldt:Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt’s advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
  Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture.

(B)

George Vancouver:George Vancouver was born in England and at the age of 13 began his naval career as an able seaman under Capt. James Cook on the Resolution. He was a midshipman on Cook’s famous third voyage in the Discovery.
  In 1790 Vancouver attained the rank of commander and the following year was given command of a new Discovery. After making new exploration around Australia and New Zealand and passing by Tahiti and Hawaii, Vancouver remained in the North Pacific, carrying out extensive exploratory trips from San Francisco northward, largely devoted to ascertaining the possibility of the elusive Northwest Passage. He was the first to chart accurately the large island which bears his name.
  Vancouver was a rigid disciplinarian and a demanding officer. He neither sought nor received the affection of his men, but he was respected. He was equally intolerant of the often bizarre theories of European geographers. His meticulous observations and stern logic largely substantiated the claims of Cook and blasted the hopes for a passage through North America anywhere to the south of Arctic waters.

(C)

Amerigo Vespucci:On May 14, 1501, Vespucci departed on another trans-Atlantic journey. Now on his third voyage, Vespucci set sail for Cape Verde – this time in the service to King Manuel I of Portugal. Vespucci’s third voyage is largely considered his most successful. While Vespucci did not start out commanding the expedition, when Portuguese officers asked him to take charge of the voyage, he agreed. Vespucci’s ships sailed along the coast of South America from Cape São Roque to Patagonia. Along the way, they discovered present-day Rio de Janeiro and Rio de la Plata. Vespucci and his fleets headed back via Sierra Leone and the Azores. Believing he had discovered a new continent, in a letter to Florence, Vespucci called South America the New World. His claim was largely based on Christopher Columbus’ earlier conclusion: in 1498, when passing the mouth of the Orinoco River, Columbus had determined that such a big outpouring of fresh water must come from a land “of continental proportions.” Vespucci decided to start recording his accomplishments, writing that accounts of his voyages would allow him to leave “some fame behind me after I die.”

(D)

Vicente Yanez Pinzon:Spanish explorer Vicente Yanez Pinzon, who had commanded the Nina during Christopher Columbus’ first expedition to the New World, reached the north-eastern coast of Brazil during a voyage under his command. Pinzon’s journey produced the first recorded account of a European explorer sighting the Brazilian coast; though whether or not Brazil was previously known to Portuguese navigators is still in dispute.
  Pinzon subsequently sailed down the Brazilian coast to the equator, where he briefly explored the mouth of the Amazon. In the same year, Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal, arguing that the territory fell into the Portuguese sphere of exploration as defined by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. However, little was done to support the claim until the 1530s, when the first permanent European settlements in Brazil were established at Sao Vicente in Sao Paulo by Portuguese colonists.