Today I Learned: A Collection of Facts We Didn’t Know We Needed to Know

When we think of someone speeding on the road, we usually envision a car going 100 mph or something like that. However, cars used to be much, much slower. That still didn’t stop people from speeding, though! The first recorded speeding ticket was given out on January 28, 1896, to an unlucky man named Walter Arnold.

According to the Peterson Automotive Museum, Mr. Arnold was caught racing down a street in Kentucky at a whopping eight mph, four times the legal two mph speed limit. Okay, Speed Racer! A police officer pursued Arnold on a bike for five miles before catching up to him and issuing a ticket. Speedometers hadn’t been invented in 1986. Can we really blame the guy?