Military Engineer Day and Engineering Day in Brazil

On April 10, the Brazilian Army celebrates the Engineering Weapon Day, an essential combat support element of the Land Force and a protagonist of the country's development and integration work. Engineering has as its main mission the support to maneuver elements, providing mobility to friendly troops, counter mobility to enemy troops, and protection.

In the early days of colonization, the saga of Engineering in Brazil began with the construction of countless fortifications to guarantee the Lusitanian occupation and protect the territory against invasions by foreign powers. It is worth mentioning the creation, in 1792, of the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Design, a forerunner of engineering education in the Americas. With the transmigration of the Portuguese court to Brazil, in 1808, the Royal Corps of Engineers, the embryo of Military Engineering, was installed in Brazil.

The Engineering Branch has as its patron Lieutenant-Colonel João Carlos de Villagran Cabrita, born in December 1820, in Montevideo, Uruguay. Lieutenant-Colonel Villagran Cabrita stood out as commander of the 1st Engineer Battalion in the theater of operations of the Triple Alliance War, where he was responsible for the transposition of the mighty Paraná River. In this conflict, he had his life brutally cut short, still at the age of 46, when he was hit by shrapnel from an enemy artillery grenade, while writing the combat section after the conquest of Redemption Island, making this date, April 10, to be chosen as the magna date of the Engineering Weapon.