Portrait of Charles Rolls

Birthday profile

Charles Rolls

Charles Rolls, English engineer and businessman, co-founded Rolls-Royce Limited (died 1910)

Born
August 27, 1877
Died
July 12, 1910
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1877

About Charles Rolls

Charles Stewart Rolls (27 August 1877 – 12 July 1910) was a British motoring and aviation pioneer. With Henry Royce, he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in Bournemouth. He was aged 32. == Early life == Rolls was born in Berkeley Square, London, third son of the 1st Baron Llangattock of the Rolls family and Lady Llangattock. Despite his London birth, he retained a strong family connection with his ancestral home, The Hendre, a country house near Monmouth in Monmouthshire in the south-east of Wales. After attending Mortimer Vicarage Preparatory School in Berkshire, he was educated at Eton College where his developing interest in engines earned him the nickname "dirty Rolls". Although his father disliked his educational choices, Rolls persisted. In 1894, he attended a private crammer in Cambridge which helped him gain entry to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1895, where he studied mechanical and applied science. In 1896, at the age of 18, he travelled to Paris to buy his first car, a Peugeot Phaeton, and joined the Automobile Club of France.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Charles Rolls was born

Charles Rolls was born in 1877. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineReconstruction ends — federal troops leave the South
  • Technology milestoneThomas Edison invents the phonograph
  • Notable inventionPhonograph — talking machine
  • World population~1.57B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderRutherford B. Hayes
  • U.S. population44.2M

1877 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Charles Rolls's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18772026
Population44.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.