On April 17th, 1964, the Ford Mustang officially went on sale at Ford dealerships across the U.S. and Canada. The first person to actually buy a Mustang was a woman named Gail Wise, who got her car on April 15th from a Chicago dealership. But another, even more important Mustang inadvertently went on sale in the farthest reaches of North America, falling into the hands of a Canadian airline pilot.

The tale of Stanley Tucker is the tale of the man who accidentally bought the first first Mustang ever built, Mustang #00001. Ford never intended to sell this important Mustang, but it wouldn’t be the first significant pony car Tucker would end up owning.

Production of the Mustang began five weeks before it actually went on sale, and a total of 180 pre-production Mustangs were built for internal testing and promotional purposes. Among them were all the early VIN numbers, including #00001, which Ford mistakenly sent to a dealership in, of all places, St. Johns in Newfoundland. It’s about as far away from Ireland as it is from Miami.

Tucker, a pilot, drove past the Ford dealership in St. Johns and saw the white Mustang convertible, and went in to buy it on the spot. It took a few weeks for Ford to realize its error and to track down Tucker, who initially didn’t want to give up his prized Mustang. But Ford and Tucker came to a deal, and the Mustang made its way back to the Blue Oval.

For his part, Tucker got a replacement Mustang, as well as being forever enshrined as the guy who briefly owned the first Mustang ever made. Less than two years later Ford awarded Tucker again, this time with the millionth Mustang ever made, another white convertible. Today the first Mustang ever made resides in the Henry Ford Museum collection, far away from harsh sea weather of Newfoundland, hopefully forever preserved for posterity.