October 1 is the UN's International Day of Older Persons, but its bigger anniversaries sit in statecraft and industry — a nation's founding and the day mass car ownership began.
On this day
1949Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, ending the civil war's conventional phase and beginning Communist Party rule that continues today.Unknown photographer via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
1908Ford Motor Company puts the Model T on sale for the first time, at $850 — the car whose moving assembly line would make automobile ownership affordable to ordinary households within two decades.National Photo Company Collection via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
1953IndiaAndhra State comes into being as India's first state formed on linguistic lines, carved from the Telugu-speaking districts of Madras State with Kurnool as its capital.మురళీకృష్ణ ముసునూరి via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Did you know
The Model T that went on sale for $850 on this day in 1908 fell to just $260 by 1924, thanks to assembly-line efficiency — a car getting cheaper even as the economy around it grew, a pattern GST-era India has occasionally managed with EVs but rarely with combustion cars.