On this date in 1902, the presidential motorcade was born.

In 1899, President William McKinley became the first president to ride in a car, a Stanley Steamer, but it was President Theodore Roosevelt who was the first to do so publicly. On August 22, 1902, while in Hartford, Connecticut, he rode in a Columbia Electric Victoria Phaeton. Because the car could reach thirteen miles per hour, the police could not keep up on foot, so they rode horses in front and bicycles alongside.

American automobile manufacturing was in its infancy in 1902, so designs were many and many designs were experimental/guesses at what might work or be popular: about half the cars on the market were electric and the other half gasoline-fueled. Roosevelt rode in a Hartford-built Columbia Electric Victoria Phaeton, which seated the driver in an external box behind the passengers at the rear of the car; two 20-volt batteries that totaled approximately 800 pounds; rubber tires; and car offered the driver four speeds, with the maximum speed thirteen miles an hour. The driver controlled the vehicle with a tiller, seen in the photo at top.
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Today is not the 175th birthday of the Venetian blind, but it is the 175th anniversary of John Hampson’s patent, “Manner of retaining in any desired position the slats of Venetian blinds” (Patent 2223). The inventor, who was based in New Orleans, developed a tool for holding the slats in place—which we still see in use in today’s blinds in the use of a rod to twist the slats to any desired angle.

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And more in Inventions Today: William Seward Burroughs I was awarded four patents on this date for his “Calculating-machine,” the invention of that led to his company, the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. (A model from the 1890s, above.)
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Dr. Hunter S. Thompson designed his funeral plans with his friend, the artist Ralph Steadman, in the 1970s: he wanted his ashes to be fired from a cannon along with red, white, and blue fireworks. Further, the cannon was to sit atop a 150-foot-tall replica of his Gonzo logo: a two-thumbed clenched fist holding a “peyote button.”

Thompson committed suicide on February 20, 2005, and friends including Johnny Depp (a fellow Kentucky native who portrayed Thompson in film and became a friend) saw to it that his final wishes were granted. Depp largely financed the fifteen-story tower.

On this date in 2005, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes were fired into the Colorado sky with “Spirit in the Sky” playing and former presidential candidates, senators past and present, actors, and journalists in attendance. (Video featuring Steadman and Thompson and the event itself below the jump.)
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