French military engineer, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, designed and built the world's first true "automobile" in 1769. Cugnot's huge, heavy, steam powered tricycle was intended for hauling artillery, had a single front wheel which both steered and propelled. In 1863 Belgian inventor, Étienne Lenoir built the first automobile with an internal combustion engine. His two-stroke vehicle made a 10 kilometre trip that took over two hours to complete. German, Karl Benz designed and in 1885 built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal combustion engine, it had three wheels. A special two wheeled vehicle was designed to test that vehicle's engine and became the first two wheeled vehicle or motorcycle. Since 1769 mankind has produced over a billion self-propulsion machines in an amazing variety of mobile technology that has been adopted all over the world, in every country. Harley-Davidson produced their first motorcycle in 1903 and the company was 91 years old when it produced vehicle number 1HD1DJL14RY502784. Many machines have circumnavigated the globe as aeroplanes, boats, cars and motorcycles. A few individual machines have visited more than half the world's countries but only this one has been to every internationally recognised country.

Country Definition. What is a Country? also called a Sovereign Country, Independent State or Sovereign State is often debated but it is now generally agreed by the United Nations, The American CIA Factbook, Wikipedia Encyclopedia, and Guinness World Records that there are 194 internationally recognised countries currently in the world.

There are 193 United Nations member states plus the Holy See (Vatican City) which is listed as the only non-member state making 194 countries recognised by the "club of countries" The United Nations.



The American CIA Factbook (Definitions, under Entities) states there are 195 Independent States. The 193 United Nations members plus the Holy See (The Vatican) and Kosovo (whose statehood has not been internationally recognised).

According to Wikipedia

there are: "194 states with general international recognition: 193 member states of the United Nations (UN). 1 state with general international recognition but not UN membership, governed by the Holy See (a UN permanent observer): Vatican City".

The Guinness World Records people had their own list of "countries" but it was hotly debated as people had claimed visits to many more places, and today there are over 670 places that some organisations recognise as places used to define the "most travelled person". By July 2004 the endless debate on what was or was not a "country" had not been resolved to the extent that Guinness World Records sent out the following information. “Unfortunately we no longer maintain such a (country) list ourselves because there is so little agreement on this subject internationally that virtually everyone disagreed with our list anyway!.....Rather than become involved in endless debates on this subject we've decided to 'freeze' the records in this category. At present when we refer to countries we mean the member states of the United Nations (i.e. sovereign countries), but do not get involved in the 'territories' debate.”

The world's newest country is South Sudan, which was accepted as a member of the United Nations on the 14th of July 2011, and which we hope to have our motorcycle visit in 2016. Montenegro, the previous newest country, was accepted by the United Nations as a member on the 28/6/06. As our motorcycle had already visited Yugoslavia, which changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro in 2003 and retained its United Nations membership as Serbia, it didn't need to be revisited. However Montenegro, the new United Nations member and a new Sovereign State, now an "internationally recognised country", required visiting, even though we had visited it as a province. Our motorcycle visited Montenegro , the Sovereign State on 31/10/06. It would seem illogical to claim to have visited a country if it did not exist at the time of the visit!!

The UN protectorate, and province of Serbia, Kosovo, recently declared itself an independent country. As the United Nations has not recognised this claim, and it is unlikely it will be recognised in the near future due to both Russian and Chinese opposition, and their UN veto powers, it is not currently internationally recognised as a sovereign country. Although we visited Kosovo prior to its claim of independence if it becomes internationally recognised, to claim it as a country, we would need to revisit.

Worlds Most Traveled Vehicle. To support our claim that this Harley-Davidson motorcycle is the World's Most Travelled Vehicle (ie it has visited the most places on earth), we have included the following. The motorcycle has visited 414 places using the Most Traveled Peoples List. The Travelers' Century Club publishes its own list it accepts as places its members can count for a visit. The motorcycle has visited 234 places according to that list. Emil and Liliana Schmidt, for their world record of the Longest Driven Journey use the pre 1996 Guinness World Record List, adjusted, of 259 places. The motorcycle has visited 208 places using that list. Should anyone wish to discuss our

claim to "The World's Most Travelled Vehicle" we would greatly appreciate correspondence on the subject by email (link at bottom of page).