Martin Luther King Jr. got a C in public speaking. The world remembers Dr. King as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and people often quote his “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered in 1963. Yet more than a decade before that legendary speech, while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he earned a C in public speaking during his first and second terms.
100 Mind-Blowing Martin Facts
“OK” most likely stands for fake words. In the 1830s, people jokingly spelt abbreviations incorrectly. One of the most famous: “All correct” turned into “orl korrekt,” and then of course into OK. Historians think it stuck because Martin Van Buren—known as Old Kinderhook, after his hometown in New York—supporters called themselves the OK Club when he was campaigning for reelection.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a C in public speaking. Everyone remembers Dr. King as an activist and his “I Have a Dream” speech delivered in 1963. However, Martin Luther King had a C in public speaking while attending the Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.
The first cell phone call was made in 1973. Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call on April 3, 1973.
Samuel L. Jackson was an usher at Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral. Jackson studied at Morehouse College, where Dr. King and other prominent civil rights activists would often visit and have debates. When King was assassinated, his funeral was held in Morehouse College, which is how Jackson was able to be one of the funeral ushers. After this experience, Jackson became much more heavily involved in the civil rights movement.
Only two people have ever swam the entire length of the 2,350-mile Mississippi River: Slovenian long-distance swimmer Martin Strel in 2002 and American former Navy SEAL Chris Ring in 2015. Strel swam for 68 days in a row; Ring took one day off a week, taking 181 days.
The first cell phone call. The first mobile phone call took place on April 3, 1973. Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher, placed the call on a prototype device. After dialling the phone number, his device connected to a base station, which then connected to the landline system of AT&T. Cooper called his biggest rival at AT&T, Joel Engel. Cooper kept the conversation both brief and modest. He simply told Engel he had made the call from a bona fide mobile phone. From there, Cooper helped Motorola and other companies usher in the age of the mobile phone a few years later.
The first cell phone call was in New York City. In 1973, the first-ever mobile phone call was made by Martin Cooper, an employee of Motorola, made from the streets of New York City. It wasn’t until 19 years later that Neil Papworth sent the first SMS message.
Oll Korrect. The origin of the phrase ‘OK’ dates back to a fad for intentionally misspelt abbreviations in 1830s Boston. When witty Bostonians began spelling ‘all correct’ as ‘Oll Korrect’, newspapers picked up on the joke. In 1840, US President Martin Van Buren, originally from Kinderhook in New York, adopted the phrase for his re-election campaign and his supporters set up ‘Old Kinderhook’, or ‘OK’, clubs across the country. The term quickly made the transition from slang to legitimate use.
Longest-Running Show: Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, running at London’s St. Martin’s Theatre since 1952, is the world’s longest continuous performance.
Open AI is facing several lawsuits for copyright infringement in ChatGPT’s training process. Some of the plaintiffs are The New York Times and book authors like George R.R. Martin and John Grisham.