​1.         We know the iconic man as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but that was not his given birth name. In fact, MLK Jr. was Michael on his birth certificate, named after his father (hence the Jr.). But after a trip to Germany in 1931, Michael Sr. decided to change his name to Martin Luther to pay reverence to the historic German theologian of the same name. His son, Michael Jr., was only two years old at the time, so the elder King decided to change his son’s name, too. Thus, Michael King Jr. became Martin Luther King Jr., as we know him.
 
2.         It was a tragic day for America and the human race when Dr. King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, but he wasn’t the only one who died at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis that day. In fact, Lorraine Bailey, a hotel worker and wife of the owner, passed away from a heart attack after hearing of King’s shooting. Lorraine was working the hotel phone switchboard at the time and suffered an incapacitating heart attack after seeing King shot, later dying from the coronary. Since there was no one else working the switchboard, that caused a long delay in calling an ambulance and getting King medical treatment, though it’s unclear if that would have helped him survive the shooting.
 
3.         The fateful day in 1968 wasn’t King’s only brush with an assassination. A decade earlier on September 20, 1958, MLK was signing copies of his new book, Stride Toward Freedom, at a department store in Harlem when a female patron named Izola Ware Curr approached him and asked if he was indeed Martin Luther King Jr. King answered yes, at which she replied, “I’ve been looking for you for five years.”  She then took out a seven-inch letter opener blade and plunged it into his chest. MLK was rushed to the hospital but the doctors couldn’t operate for three hours, as the tip of the blade was pressed against his aortic valve. When the blade was finally removed safely, the doctor told King that if he had even sneezed during those three hours, he could have ruptured the aorta and died instantly.
 
While recovering in the hospital, King reaffirmed his philosophies of non-violence and stated that he bore no ill will or anger towards the mentally ill Curr.
 
4.         A young King was not only a born leader, but prolifically intelligent. In fact, King bypassed the 9th and 11th grades altogether, entering Moorehouse College at the tender age of 15 in 1944. He graduated with distinction by 19 with a degree in sociology, the first of many degrees and accomplishments in higher learning.
 
King attended graduate school at Boston University and earned his Ph.D. in systematic theology. He also attended divinity school and got a doctorate from Pennsylvania’s Crozer Theological Seminary at the age of 25.
 
5.         Over his lifetime, Dr. King Jr. was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and a Medal of Freedom. But few know that he also won a Grammy Award in 1971 – out of context for a civil rights activist – for Best Spoken Word Album for “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam”.
 
6.         King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35, the youngest person to ever win the prominent award at the time. When the brave and inspirational Malala Yousafzai won the Peace Prize in 2014 at the age of 17, she became the youngest ever, a torch MLK would have been honored to pass down to her.
 
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize came with a sizable $54,123 payout (about $400,000 today). But instead of pocketing the money, King donated every penny to the Civil Rights Movement. During his acceptance speech, King During his acceptance speech, said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
 
7.         Martin Luther King Jr. Day is now a national holiday observed on the third Monday in January. This year, it will fall on Monday, January 18, though his actual birthday was January 15, 1929.
 
8.         Only two other people in American history have a national holiday commemorating their birthday, George Washington and Christopher Columbus. Therefore, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the only native born American to have a national holiday honoring his birthday.
 
9.         Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, introduced legislation for a holiday commemorating the deceased Dr. King only four days after his assassination. But getting Dr. King’s birthday approved as a national holiday was not an easy road by any means. The bill was repeatedly stalled, and Coretta Scott King, Stevie Wonder, Rep. Shirley Chisholm  (D-NY), President Jimmy Carter and other prominent politicians and Americans had to fight for it over the years, finally presenting 6,000,000 signatures to congress in 1982.

10.       Finally, in 1983, Congress passed the bill and President Ronald Reagan officially signed legislation creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a national holiday, despite opposition from Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Gordon Humphrey (R-NH), who attempted to block it.
 
11.       But some states still resisted observing the holiday. As of January 16, 1989, only 44 states observed Dr. King’s birthday as a holiday. In 1992, Arizona finally approved the holiday only after a tourist boycott. In 1999, New Hampshire changed their Civil Rights Day to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and finally, Utah acquiesced in 2000, the last of all 50 states to observe.
 
12.       There are now more than 700 streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. all over the country, as well as plenty of schools, libraries, and other civic buildings.
 
13.       Over his career as a civil rights champion, Dr. King was arrested 29 times on record. He was often arrested and incarcerated on trumped up charges during his campaign of civil disobedience, a tactic used by local law enforcement and segregationists to try and scare Dr. King and dissuade the movement (it didn’t work.)
 
14.       Few people realize that on the fateful day Dr. King was shot on that motel balcony in Memphis, he was actually standing out there to smoke a cigarette. In fact, MLK was a regular smoker, though he always hid his habit and never appeared in a photo with a cigarette because he didn't want to set a bad example for his kids or to advocate or popularize smoking in any way. Before Dr. King was loaded into the ambulance after being shot that day, one his associates, Reverend Kyles, tossed away the fallen civil rights leader’s cigarette butts and removed the pack of smokes from his shirt pocket.
 
15.       King’s impact on the black community went far beyond the Civil Rights movement that caught the national attention. When Nichelle Nichols, a young black actress on a new sci-fi television program, wanted to quit after the first season amid harassment and threats, Dr. King, a fan of the show, encouraged and persuaded her to stick it out. She did, and became a pioneer in the industry, the first black television character portrayed as intelligent and capable, respected as an equal with her white actors and peers. (Up until then, black actors usually played maids, servants, or other diminished and stereotypical roles.)
 
The show went on to be a smash hit and Nichols’ character portrayal served as a positive role model for many black kids who went on to achieve great success, such as actress/comedian Whoopi Goldberg and astronaut Ronald McNair, the second black person in space. Nichols even had the first interracial kiss ever shown on national television in America.
 
By the way, her character was named “Uhura” and the show, Star Trek.

-Norm   :-)

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1. The air quality is so bad in the mega city of Mumbai in India that just one day outdoors is the equivalent of smoking 100 cigarettes.

2. India has far more cell phones than toilets.

3. Sex toys are still illegal in India.

4. The world's largest family unit – a man and his 39 wives and 94 children – live together in India.

5.    In one state in India, police officers are given a pay upgrade if they have moustaches. 

6.    The highest temperature ever recorded in India was 123.1 °F in Alwar, Rajasthan, while the lowest was -49 °F in Dras, Ladakh. 

12. An Indian man claims he hasn't had anything to eat or drink in 70 years. No one has seen him do either and after running many tests doctors still can’t disprove him or figure out how it’s possible.

13. The stats about roadway fatalities in India are even more grim: 37% of all road deaths are pedestrians who were hit, 28% cyclists and motorcyclists, and 55% of all deaths occur within five minutes of the accident.

14. There’s a village in India, called Shani Shingnapur, where no houses or structures have doors and nothing is locked up. Even shops are left wide open and nothing of value is kept secured. However, there has never been a reported theft in the history of the village, and they believe they’re protected by God.

15. India actually developed a rocket and launched it into outer space. So how did the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) transport the rocket to the launch site? With a series of bicycles. 

16. Call it K9 karma, because in an act of atonement, an Indian man recently got married to a dog.

17. At least 50% of the outsourced IT services in the world come from India. 

18. They wear white at funerals in India instead of black, most common in other countries.

19. India has a national obsession with breaking records. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, India ranks third behind the USA and the UK in the number of records claimed each year, though they have many other record books they fill up.

20. Cherrapunji in India is the wettest spot on earth, receiving 425 inches of rain every year, more than 5 times as much as the tropical rain forests in South America.

21. Some of the recent world records include the largest gathering of people (891) dressed like Mahatma Gandhi, the longest garland made of cakes of cattle dung (2 km), the longest time performing yoga on horseback (10 hours), a man who typed 103 words in 47 seconds with his nose, and the record for lighting electric bulbs by passing a wire through the nose and out of the mouth: 30 sixty-watt bulbs.
 
22. The largest current slave population in the world resides in India, with over 14 million people forced to work for no wages or against their will every day.

23. The city of Mumbai is so overpopulated and congested, that the government set out to solve the problem by building a second, parallel city right next to it. Navi Mumbai was developed in 1972 and remains the largest planned township in the history of the world.

24. One Indian family has 31 doctors in in it. Known as “the doctor family”, they have 7 physicians, 5 gynecologists, 3 ophthalmologists, 3 ENT specialists, psychiatrists, pathologists, neurologists, an orthopedist and one urologist.

31. In a part of India called West Bengal, cows are required to have their own photo ID cards.

32. It's illegal to carry Indian currency (Rupees) out of the country.

33. The Kumbh Mela Festival is the world's biggest gathering, with over 100 million people in attendance every time it commences.

34. The typical person in India would have to work at least 6 hours just to buy a McDonalds Big Mac.

35. India is home to the most languages in the world. The 1961 census of India documented 1,652 languages in use in the country at that time.

36. There are more than one million Indian millionaires, behind only the U.S., Japan, and about tied with China.

41. Legend has it that the famous Levitating Stone of Qamar Ali Darvesh in Shivapur, India can be lifted with only 11 fingertips if you shout the name “Qamar Ali Darvesh!” as you lift. By the way, the stone weighs 200 kg.

42. India was the only place on earth diamonds were officially found until 1986, when they were discovered in Africa and several other countries. 

43. Despite it’s huge landmass, all of India is in one time zone. But it does differ from a ½ hour from neighboring countries and international time standards, making things complicated. So when it’s 6:30pm in India it’s 8am in New York.

44. Complicated surgeries and operations were performed over 2,600 years ago in India.

45. A village in northern India is called Snapdeal.com Nagar. The village, previously named Shiv Nagar, officially changed its name to Snapdeal.com Nagar in exchange for the e-commerce website installing 15 hand water pumps for the villagers.

46. The Kodinhi village in the southern state of Kerala is known internationally as “Twin Town” because it produces such an alarming rate of twins.

47. We know that Indian people love animals, but taking it one step further, there’s an elephant spa, the Punnathoor Cotta Elephant Yard Rejuvenation Centre in Kerala, where the majestic animals receive the royal treatment.

48. The Indian prime minister elect, Narendra Modi, went to the U.S. to take a three-month course on public relations and image management. It must have worked, because he was one of the most popular Indian leaders in memory.

49. An elaborate wedding in Bengaluru was called off when the bride’s family served the groom’s family chicken biryani instead of mutton biryani. Although biryani is the typical wedding dish, the lack of the correct meat source was seen as an offensive slight that led to a big fight, and the cancellation of the nuptials.

50. Since so many Indians speak English as their second language, India now has the most English speakers in the world, ahead of even the U.S. or the U.K.