In 1891, the entire state of Ohio had only two automobiles, and they somehow managed to crash into each other.

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In 1891, the entire state of Ohio had only two automobiles, and they somehow managed to crash into each other. James William Packard and James Ward Packard were involved in this historic blunder, proving that human incompetence vastly outpaces technological advancement. You would think that having millions of square miles of open land and literally zero traffic would make it impossible to hit the only other motorized vehicle in existence, but you clearly underestimate the pioneer spirit of bad drivers. Today, we honor their legacy by staring at our phones while drifting across three lanes of rush hour traffic, but these visionaries did it with raw, undistracted stupidity

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In 1891, the entire state of Ohio had only two automobiles, and they somehow managed to crash into each other.

A closer look

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Karl Benz's wife, Bertha, took the world's first long-distance road trip in 1888 without telling her husband, effectively inventing the concept of joyriding.

Electric vehicles constituted roughly one third of all cars on American roads in the year 1900, vastly outnumbering their loud, smelly, and aggressively dangerous gasoline-powered counterparts.

London's Times newspaper predicted in 1894 that every street in the city would be buried under nine feet of horse manure within fifty years.

King Philip II of Spain utilized one of the first recorded dedicated wheelchairs in 1595, which was essentially an immensely heavy wooden throne outfitted with tiny wheels and armrests.

The woman who drove across America in 1909

Why pioneers walked beside their wagons

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