LEGO
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program.
In May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York City and was made of over 5 million bricks; a 1:1 scale model of an X-wing fighter.
Facts
1. If you put the 340 million Minifigures produced last year next to each other in a line, it would stretch a whopping 7,900 km – that’s almost the distance from London, UK to Beijing, China!
2. The famous LEGO brick that we play with today is more than 50 years old. The bricks made way back in 1958 will still fit perfectly with those you buy today!
3. The moulds used to produce LEGO bricks are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimetre (0.002 mm!). Because of this high degree of accuracy, there are only around 18 bricks in every million produced that fail to meet the company’s high quality standard.
4. The world’s tallest LEGO tower is 28.7m high, made from with 465,000 bricks!
5. During the Christmas season almost 28 LEGO sets are sold each second.
6. At LEGO attractions, such as LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester, people are hired as “Master Model Builders“.
7. Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world.
8. On average there are 80 LEGO bricks for every person on earth.
9. In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's "world's most powerful brand".