Refresh for new random facts
1. Fur trader John Jacob Astor would be worth around $100 Billion in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation.
2. The last mass marketed 12 cylinder car produced in the United States was the 1948 Lincoln Continental.
3. Producers of American whiskey originated the term "brand name," because they branded their names on the barrels they shipped out.
4. The first Ford cars had engines made by Dodge.
5. Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle at approximately 25 miles per hour.
6. Frozen food entrepreneur Clarence Birdseye also invented a recoilless harpoon for whaling and a fast process for converting sugar cane waste into paper pulp.
7. Brothers Isaiah and John Wesley Hyatt developed plastic in 1869 while competing for a $10,000 prize offered by a company looking for a substitute for ivory in billiard balls.
8. Thomas Edison has been granted the most U.S. patents for inventions, 1093.
9. Diners Club issued its first card to only two hundred customers and it could only be used at twenty seven restaurants in New York City.
10. Starbucks was originally going to be called "Pequod," after the fishing vessel in Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick. The founders settled on Starbuck, the first mate on the ship, instead.
When me and old Abe used to sit by the fire he would tell me the darndest tales about this great land of ours.
