Refresh for new random facts
1. Pepsi derives its name from the treatment of "dyspepsia", an intestinal ailment.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. All of automaker Henry Ford's cars were black until 1925, when he introduced two new colors, green and maroon.
5. The soft drink industry spends more than $100 million a year in stopping thefts involving their vending machines.
6. Bank of America was originally called "The Bank of Italy." It was founded by Amadeo Giannini in 1904 to cater to Italian immigrants in San Francisco.
7. The only American to have two cars named after him was Ransom E. Olds- the Oldsmobile and the long-discontinued Reo, which was produced from 1904 to 1936.
8. Fortune cookies were invented in America, in 1918, by Charles Jung.
9. Due to a family feud, the Waldorf-Astoria hotel was once two separate hotels built next to each other owned by John Jacob Astor IV and his cousin William Waldorf Astor.
10. The first words heard over the newly invented telephone were, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" when Alexander Graham Bell spilled acid on his trousers.
When me and old Abe used to sit by the fire he would tell me the darndest tales about this great land of ours.
