In 1698 English Engineer, Thomas Savery patented the first steam Engine.

In 1964 United States President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The bill gave equal rights to all US citizens regardless of race, sex, country of origin or religion with regards to voting, education, public accommodations, union membership and all programmes that gain financial assistance from the US government.

This bill is signed almost a decade after the African-American Civil Rights movement began. Although not the first act of defiance by an African-American against their ill-treatment, Rosa Parks’s refusal to give in to segregation laws and give up her seat to a white passenger snow balled into a national crisis and eventually to equal rights.

On the 1^st of December 1955 Mrs Parks was on a bus situated in the section for African Americans when the driver noticed that white passengers were standing. As the seats reserved for white passengers were full the bus driver, James Blake, moved the sign marking the “colored” section backwards and ordered the four African-Americans sitting in the seats to move.  Mrs Parks refused to give up her seat and was subsequently arrested.

Mrs Parks’ court case took place on the 5^th of December 1955 and Civil rights leader Martin Luther King arranged for a bus boycott in Alabama that would last from the day of the trial until the 20^th of December 1956. Mrs Parks lost her case and was fined $10 (£6) for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. Mrs Parks challenged the verdict and her case was used as a test case against segregation. Martin Luther King was also convicted of starting an illegal bus boycott in Alabama on the 22^nd of March 1956. He was fined $500 (£178) and ordered to pay court costs of the same value. Kings lawyer gave notice of their intention to appeal and the sentenced was changed from a fine to a 386 day prison sentence which would be suspended until the appeal hearing. The boycott lasted 382 days, ending in December 1956 after the bus companies were forced by a US Supreme court ruling that made racial segregation on transport illegal.

Many other events and protest, including the Mississippi Race Riots in 1960, led to President John F. Kennedy introduced the bill on the 11^th of June 1963. The bill caused much controversy but was eventually passed by the House of Representatives on the 2^nd of July 1964 with 289 votes for and 126 votes against. The bill was therefore signed that evening by President Johnson in the White House.