Elijah McCoy

Elijah McCoy (May 2, 1844 – October 10, 1929) patented the Lubricator Attachment for steam engine trains on April 19, 1887.  This invention greatly changed the locomotive industry by allowing trains to be oiled while in motion.  Prior to this invention, trains had to be completely shut down for oil maintenance.  This invention saved the train industry a lot of time and money.  McCoy patented 57 inventions primarily associated with the locomotive industry.  Some of those patents not associated with the locomotive industry were for a lawn sprinkler, ironing board, design for a rubber shoe heel, a buggy top support and tread for tires. McCoy also established his own company (Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company).

More Events On This Day

2018

King Mswati III announced that he was changing his country's name from the Kingdom of Swaziland to the Kingdom of Eswatini.Can you match these African leaders to the countries they led?

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2005

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected to succeed Pope John Paul II, who had died some two weeks earlier; Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI.Take our quiz about popes

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1995

In what was the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history up to that time, a truck bomb nearly destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 and injuring more than 500 people.

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1993

After a 51-day standoff with U.S. federal agents, some 80 members of the millennialist Branch Davidian religious group perished in a fire at their compound near Waco, Texas.How much do you know about U.S. history?

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1975

Aryabhata, the first uncrewed Earth satellite built by India, was launched from the Soviet Union by a Russian-made rocket.Sort fact from fiction in our space objects quiz

ISRO/NASA

1943

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of resistance by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation, began this day and was quelled four weeks later, on May 16.Test your knowledge of World War II

© National Archives/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

1772

English economist David Ricardo, who gave systematized and classical form to the rising social science of economics in the 19th century, is believed to have been born on or about this day.