16 August is observed annually as National Roller Coaster Day. It is primarily observed in the USA. On this day, you will find people at amusement parks and theme parks across the country to participate in National Roller Coaster Day.
The theme of National Roller Coaster Day 2022
16 August is observed annually as National Roller Coaster Day. There is no specific theme for the day.
Quick facts about Roller Coaster ride
Here are quick facts about Roller Coaster:
- The American roller coaster was invented to save America from Satan.
- One of the earliest coasters in America carried coal before it carried thrill seekers.
- In the 15th century, Russians really upped the ante on sledding, building giant, wooden slides—some up to 70 feet tall and 100 feet in length—that they covered in slick ice. Mounted on an ice block with a straw seat, riders could reach up to 50 miles per hour.
- some roller coasters can loop the loop, but have you ever noticed it’s never perfectly circular? To oversimplify things, the loop isn’t a circle itself, it’s roughly the part where two circles hypothetically overlap, sort of like the middle of a Venn diagram.
- interested in riding 465 feet straight toward the sky and then descending at a rapid clip? Then the Kingda Ka roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, is for you. It goes from zero to 128 miles per hour in only 3.5 seconds in order to speed you up the rails 45 stories high at a 90-degree angle, according to the website. The rest of the ride is a spiralling 50.6-second blur.
- If you like your coasters rickety, then Leap-The-Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania, is the ride for you. The wooden rollercoaster was built in 1902, and, yes, 117 years later, it’s still in operation. It goes ten miles an hour and doesn’t have seatbelts, lap bars or headrests.
History of National Roller Coaster Day
On August 16, 1898, Edwin Prescott, a roller coaster designer from Massachusetts, was granted a patent for an improvement to roller coasters that ride enthusiasts have come to take for granted—the vertical loop. While the roller coaster depicted in the patent’s illustration, and later realized as the Loop the Loop coaster at Coney Island, wasn’t the first to invert riders in a loop, it did usher in the safer, more comfortable and now prevailing elliptical-shaped loop.
Prescott’s Loop the Loop was surprisingly unsuccessful—mostly due to the fact that only one car with four passengers could ride the coaster at a time. It closed in 1910 after only nine years in operation. But the inventor’s pioneering spirit is honoured every August 16 on National Roller Coaster Day.