Today in History, January 29th
On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for his motor car patent. Plus Kansas statehood, "The Raven" and baseball's first Hall of Famers.
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January 29 is best known for 1886, when Carl Benz applied for a German patent on his gas-powered three-wheeler, often called the birth certificate of the automobile. The date also brought Kansas into the Union as a free state in 1861 and saw the Baseball Hall of Fame elect its first five players in 1936.
The big story: Carl Benz Patents the Motor Car (1886)
Plenty of inventors had bolted engines onto carts. Carl Benz built a machine where the engine and the frame were designed together, and then he got the paperwork. On January 29, 1886, the Mannheim engineer applied for German patent No. 37435 for a “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” His Motorwagen had three wire-spoked wheels, a steel-tube frame and a small single-cylinder, four-stroke engine mounted flat at the back. It made about three-quarters of one horsepower. The car had first run in 1885, and newspapers covered its first public outing in July 1886. Sales were slow until his wife stepped in. In August 1888, Bertha Benz quietly took a newer model and her two teenage sons on a round trip of about 180 kilometers between Mannheim and her hometown of Pforzheim, without telling Carl. It was the first long-distance drive by car, and it proved the thing worked.
More events on January 29
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1820 | King George III, Britain’s monarch during the American Revolution, died at Windsor Castle at 81. |
| 1845 | Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” appeared in the New York Evening Mirror and soon became his best-known poem. |
| 1856 | Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross by royal warrant. It remains Britain’s highest award for gallantry. |
| 1861 | President James Buchanan signed the bill admitting Kansas as the 34th state, a free state, after years of violence over slavery. |
| 1929 | The Seeing Eye, the first guide dog school in the U.S., was incorporated in Nashville, Tennessee, by Dorothy Harrison Eustis and Morris Frank. |
| 1936 | The Baseball Hall of Fame elected its first class: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. |
| 1964 | Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove opened in theaters. |
| 1979 | Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping met President Jimmy Carter at the White House during his landmark U.S. visit. |
| 2002 | In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an “axis of evil.” |
| 2020 | President Donald Trump signed the law to implement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade pact that replaced NAFTA. |
Born on January 29
- 1737: Thomas Paine, English-born writer whose pamphlet Common Sense pushed Americans toward independence.
- 1843: William McKinley, 25th president of the United States.
- 1860: Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short-story master (January 17 in the Old Style calendar then used in Russia).
- 1954: Oprah Winfrey, talk show host, producer and media executive.
Sources
- 1885–1886: The first automobile, Mercedes-Benz Group
- Karl Benz, Britannica
- This Day in History: January 29, History.com
- Edgar Allan Poe and “The Raven”, Library of Congress
- Victoria Cross, National Army Museum
- When Kansas Became a State, Kansas Historical Society
- Our History, The Seeing Eye
- U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects first members, History.com
- President Delivers State of the Union Address, The White House (archived)
- Bill Announcement, January 29, 2020, The White House (archived)
