Happy 50th, Lego

It's Lego's 50th birthday and here are some interesting facts about the little wonder brick:

• On January 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for the interlocking and studded plastic brick
• The name Lego comes from the first two letters of the Danish words "Leg godt" or "play well" in English
• The company's iconic toy allows an infinite number of assembly combinations. With just two bricks there are 24 different combinations, and with six there are 915 million possibilities
• A half-century after its creation, more than 400 million children and adults play each year with the bricks, spending five billion hours a year putting them together and pulling them apart
• The bricks made today can still interlock with those made in the first batch in 1958
• South Korean adventurer Heo Young-Ho, who climbed Mount Everest in 1987, left a Lego toy behind in the snow after his ascent
• Lego was named "Toy of the Century" in 1999 by US business magazine Fortune
• Seven boxes of Lego are sold every second around the world
• 19 billion components are produced each year -- enough to wrap around the Earth's circumference five times

Lego was one of my favourite toys as a child, I used to spend hours and hours playing with it. I inherited a box of Lego bricks and over time I was bought some Lego of my own. Although I received other building blocks of various types, it was always Lego that did it for me. My kids play Lego too, although they have the Bionicle sets as well as the straightforward blocks. However, they probably play more with the simple blocks than the Bionicle sort.  [News source for the facts above]