1. LEGO got its name when the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, took the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, meaning “play well”, and put them together – quite unaware that LEGO in Latin means ... “I put together”.
2. Approximately 20 billion LEGO elements (bricks) are made every year in the LEGO factory in Billund – equivalent to approximately 2 million elements an hour or 35,000 a minute.
3. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimeter (0.002 mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company’s high quality standard.
4. A professor of mathematics calculated that there are over 915 million ways to combine six LEGO bricks.
5. Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world.
6. On average there are 62 LEGO bricks for every person on earth.
7. The world’s children spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
8. With a production of about 306 million tyres a year, the LEGO Group is the world’s largest tyre (tire) manufacturer.
9. Approximately 440 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured since 1949.
10. When the minifigure first appeared, it was decided that its face should have only one colour: yellow and that its facial features should be happy and neutral. Now the minifigure appears in many guises, including Santa Claus, Spiderman and even Steven Spielberg.
11. There has been approximately 4 billion minifigures produced – making it the world’s biggest population group.
12. LEGO group is owned and managed by the founder’s grandson, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen – with his children.
13. There are about 2,350 different elements in the LEGO range – plus 52 different LEGO colours. Each element may be sold in a wide variety of different colours and decorations, bringing the total number of active combinations to more than 7,000.
SOURCE FOR WEBFACTS: http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=facts
