- Another word for a merry-go-round is a carousel. This word is French and refers to a jousting game played by knights, which in turn comes from the Italian and Spanish words for "a little battle". “Merry-go-round” and “round about” are words mostly used in the United Kingdom.
- The merry-go-round probably originated some time in the seventeenth century. The first ones weren't a children's ride but a game devised for knights to practice their jousting skills, where they'd ride wooden horses and toss balls to one another. Later they would spear small rings suspended from poles. While the knights were playing their game on wooden horses, real Horses would be used to make the platform go around.
- The first steam-powered mechanical roundabout, invented by Thomas Bradshaw, appeared at the Aylsham Fair in about 1861. A newspaper report of the time expressed wonder that "the daring riders are not shot off like cannon-ball, and driven half into the middle of next month."
- Horses are the most popular animals on carousels or merry-go-rounds. Eighty percent of animals carved for carousels in America are horses. However, other animals, and birds such as Swans sometimes appear, along with Disney characters and sometimes model cars or aeroplanes.
- There are usually 16-20 horses or other animals on a carousel. Each horse weighs about 100 lbs (45 kg).
- The side of the horse facing outwards is more decorative than the side facing the middle of the merry-go-round. The outside face is known as the "romance" side.
- The average length of a carousel ride is two to three minutes at a velocity of about five rounds a minute.
- In the United Kingdom, merry-go-rounds usually turn clockwise as viewed from above, and viewed from the outside, the animals face left. In America it's the opposite way around. The carousel turns anti-clockwise and the animals face right.
- The oldest existing carousel was made in 1779 to 1780 and is at the Wilhelmsbad Park in Hanau, Germany.
- The president of the National Carousel Association, Bette Largent and carousel historian, Ronald Hopkins, founded National Merry-Go-Round-Day in 2014. The date commemorates the first US patent for the modern carousel, issued in 1871 to William Schneider of Davenport, Iowa. The purpose of the day is to highlight beautiful and historic carousels.
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