Saturday, April 25th, the day this was written, is the 125th anniversary of New York being the first state to require automobile owners to register their vehicles with the state.

That's right. Today is the 125th birthday of everyone's favorite government institution: The Department of Motor Vehicles, or DMV. //

New York's first plates were homemade, bearing only the owner's initials without any numbers. It was Massachusetts that actually issued its first license plates in 1903." //

In fact, the late adoption by the United States leads to one of the few examples of France being in first place in anything that didn't involve snails or surrendering to Germany.