July 25 is National Carousel Day aka National Merry-Go-Round Day. The designation was created by the National Carousel Association (N.C.A.) as a way to mark the issuance of the first U.S. patent for a carousel — U.S. Patent No. 117,336 issued ti Willhelm Schneider of Davenport, Iowa:

Schneider’s carousel was a two-stories, with a staircase between them. As the title of the patent (Improvement in Carrousels) suggests, this was not the first carousel in the U.S. — that honor appears to go to Franz Wiesenoffer who built a carousel in the 1840’s in Hessville, Ohio. However, carousels were build and being operated at various fairs and gatherings in Central Europe since the early 18th Century..