This Day in History: On this day in 1977, Tom Pryce, a driver in the 1977 South African Grand Prix, struck and killed Frederick Jansen Van Vuuren at 170 miles per hour (270 km/h) as Van Vuuren ran across the Kyalami racetrack to extinguish a burning car. In turn, the fire extinguisher which Van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce's head and killed him.
That is not even close to being the worst accident at a race. In 1955 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Mercedes Benz driver Pierre Levegh crashed into the stands and killed 83 spectators and injured 180 others.
This Day in History: Isadora Duncan, an American dancer, broke her neck in Nice, France on this day in 1927 when her long scarf became entangled in the open-spoked wheel and rear axle of the automobile in which she was riding.
"The 'long scarf syndrome' was first described in medical literature in 1971, when two skiers sustained head and neck injuries after the free ends of their scarves became entangled in ski tows. A year later, 11 more cases were described, involving entanglement of scarves in moving machinery. Five of the victims died from asphyxia due to strangulation, six suffered facial wounds and fractures." Source
One woman in Edinburgh in 2001 and another Indian woman in 2020 died when their scarves got caught in the spokes of a rickshaw.
This Day in History: German automotive engineer Karl Benz, officially unveiled the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first purpose-built automobile on this day in 1886.
The original cost of the vehicle in 1886 was 600 imperial German marks, approximately 150 US dollars (equivalent to $4,524 in 2021). Karl's wife Bertha demonstrated its feasibility in a trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim in August 1888, shortly before it became the first commercially available automobile in history in the late summer of 1888.
Benz is widely regarded as "the father of the car" and "father of the automobile industry".
Henry Ford "was the first to acknowledge his debt to all the inventors and dreamers who had gone before him. 'I invented nothing new,' he conceded many years later. 'I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work, and the discoveries of still other men who preceded them. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the great forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.'” Source
This Day in History: The Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T and began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A on this day (May 27) in 1927. The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relatively low price was partly the result of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual handcrafting. The Model T was colloquially known as the "Tin Lizzie," "Leaping Lena" or "flivver".
The Ford Model T was named the most influential car of the 20th century in the 1999 Car of the Century competition, ahead of the BMC Mini, Citroën DS, and Volkswagen Beetle. Ford's Model T was successful not only because it provided inexpensive transportation on a massive scale, but also because the car signified innovation for the rising middle class and became a powerful symbol of the United States' age of modernization. With 15 million sold, it was the most sold car in history before being surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972, and still stood eighth on the top-ten list, as of 2012.
By 1918, half of all the cars in the U.S. were Model Ts. In his autobiography, Ford reported that in 1909 he told his management team, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."
