I am reading The Secret of the Great Pyramid by Bob Brier and Jean-Pierre Houdin. Along about Chapter 7 they start talking about Henri Houdin, Jean-Pierre's father, and his career as a civil engineer building stuff in Africa, including this bridge back in the 1950's. (Google Map here.) It's kind of a cool bridge, being a double decker with trains running on the lower level inside of box girders and cars running on top. But I couldn't find much else about it, no construction photos, no explanation of ventilation for the trains (presumably diesel). On the map you can see there are train tracks leading up to both ends, so presumably it still handles rail traffic of some sort. I had a little more luck with name.
The bridge is named for Félix Houphouët-Boigny, dictator for life of Ivory Coast from 1960 until his death in 1993. In 1990 UNESCO established the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, which is kind of weird until you read what happened in Ivory Coast since he died.
All of which brings us to today's Wizard of ID:
P.S. I want to call 'Ivory Coast' 'the Ivory Coast', probably because I'm a dead white European male and think of ivory as describing the coast, whereas in this case it is the proper name of the country. So if you are not talking about the country, you can say the ivory coast, but not if you are. Clear?
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