Today Is...First Motor Car Unveiled

Karl Benz began life as a locksmith before moving into engineering and working as a draftsman building bridges and inventing the petrol powered engine in 1873 but it wasn't until 13 years later in 1886 he found a use for it, sticking it inside 100kg of metal and inventing the motor car or as he called it, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
He set out to design a horseless carriage and based his designs on bicycles which is why his car had three wheels and was a tricycle with ambition but to go along with his car he also had to invent the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear stick and the water radiator.
You probably think that the unveiling of the first motor car would be a big, flashy event but only a few people turned up and then the car wouldn't even start and when he did finally get it going, it would only go in reverse and it drove straight into a wall thereby literally the first motor car crash.
The Benz Patent-Motorwagen had steel-spoked wheels and solid rubber tires and went a dizzying 10mph and after receiving an official license to operate the Motorwagen on the public roads, it was Mrs Benz who drove it on the first long-distance road trip to demonstrate its feasibility and when went into production they built 25 in the first run.
The Benz company later merged with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz and became the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced a year.
In 1895, Benz designed the first truck with an internal combustion engine in history and then went on to build the first bus so next time you are stuck in a traffic jam, blame him.