The 15,000,000th and final Model T automobile was driven off the Ford Motor Company’s assembly line by Henry Ford and his son Edsel in Highland Park, Michigan, on this date in 1927 (photo above).

The company started manufacturing the vehicle on October 1, 1908, and it was still popular two decades later—Ford’s factories produced between 1.5 and 2.0 million Model T’s each year from 1922 through 1926, but the numbers had been declining. It was time to introduce the Model A to the nation’s consumers. The replacement did quite well, too.

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Kaspar Hauser appeared on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, on this date in 1828. He appeared to be a teenager, he carried two letters on his person, and he gave little evidence of understanding anything said to him. Taken together, the letters told a fantastical tale: one letter stated that it was from Kaspar’s caretaker and the second claimed to be from the boy’s mother to the caretaker, but both letters were in the same handwriting, probably the boy’s. Was he a runaway?
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