Portrait of Felix Wankel

Birthday profile

Felix Wankel

Felix Wankel, German engineer (died 1988)

Born
August 13, 1902
Died
October 9, 1988
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1902

About Felix Wankel

Felix Heinrich Wankel was a German mechanical engineer and inventor after whom the Wankel engine was named. Wankel joined various radical antisemitic organizations after World War I and was a prominent member of the Nazi Party. True to this prediction, he conceived the Wankel engine in 1924 and won his first patent in 1929. Wankel founded and led youth groups associated with a front organization of the NSDAP. Wankel, who sympathized with the social-revolutionary wing of the NSDAP with Gregor Strasser, then founded his own National Socialist splinter group in Lahr and continued his attacks on Wagner. Wankel was gifted since childhood with an ingenious spatial imagination and became interested in the world of machines, especially combustion engines.

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

The world when Felix Wankel was born

Felix Wankel was born in 1902. 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.

Culture in 1902

  • Best-selling bookThe Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Rose Bowl game played in Pasadena, California
  • Top headlineEnd of Philippine-American War
  • Technology milestoneAir conditioning invented by Willis Carrier
  • Notable inventionAir conditioning
  • World population~1.62B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population79.0M

1902 versus 2026

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

Measure19022026
Population79.0M341 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.