Today Is...National Roller Coaster Day

When you go to an Amusement Park and you get pinned by a bar into your seat on the Rollercoaster then consider yourself lucky because the first rollercoasters didn't have any concerns about safety and if you survived then you were having a good day.
The first Rollercoasters appeared in the 17th century, when something (probably copious amounts of full strength vodka) convinced the Russian's that constructing massive five stories high wooden scaffolds, coating them in ice and pushing their children down them at dangerous speeds was a great way to spend the day.
Calling them Russian Mountains, they did build bumps and lay hay at the end to stop the person hurtling down the slide which to them constituted a stopping mechanism which must have impressed the Russian Empress Catherine the Great as she decided to have her own personal slide built in her back garden but as it was ice based and therefore only suitable for half the year, she asked for wheeled carts and invented the modern roller coaster.
French invaders caught sight of it during the Napoleonic Wars and brought the idea back to their home country and gradually the Roller Coaster spread around the Globe to empty the pockets of unsuspecting riders everywhere when it flips upside down.