Refresh for new random facts
1. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the founders of National Geographic magazine.
2. Car magnate Henry Ford would be worth around $200 Billion in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation.
3. The Burpee seed catalogue originally sold real chickens when first introduced by 17-year old Washington Atlee Burpee in 1876.
4. William Randolph Hearst's father struck it rich mining silver and gold in Nevada in 1859 and had the largest private mining firm in the U.S. The HBO show Deadwood was based on one of his mines.
5. Believe it or not, the shopping cart wasn't invented until 1937, by Oklahoma grocery store owner Sylvan Goldman, who had only an 8th grade education. The design was based on a wooden folding chair.
6. It took about 95 minutes to construct a Model T Ford in 1914.
7. 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.
8. The last mass marketed 12 cylinder car produced in the United States was the 1948 Lincoln Continental.
9. The first major deodorant company in the U.S. was called Odorono; its first ad led hundreds of women to cancel their subscriptions to Ladies Home Journal in 1919.
10. Kleenex tissues were marketed as a cold cream remover when first introduced in 1924.
When me and old Abe used to sit by the fire he would tell me the darndest tales about this great land of ours.
