Mr. Ole Kirk Christiansen

On April 7, 1891, in Vejile, Denmark, a legend was born. His name is Mr. Ole Kirk Chrstiansen. In 1955, he made the greatest toy of all: LEGOS. He had made something great like Lincoln. Lincoln made slaves free and was president during the Civil War, and Mr. Christiansen made LEGOS for kids and adults. At age three, I got my first LEGO set. I loved it! Ever since then I wanted to build LEGOS for fun and a job. Now an little history about Mr. Christansen.

Ole Kirk Christiansen LEGO logoThe original uploader was MesserWoland at English Wikipedia. / Public domain

Before Mr. Christansen started with LEGOS, he was a carpenter like Lincoln who worked on a farm splitting wood for fences. Mr. Christiansen loved making children's toys so much that he switched from carpentry to being a toy maker. His smart decision happened during the Great Depression. He made the first LEGO in 1955, which were the bricks that were red and white. The word LEGO comes from the Danish word "leg" and "godt," which means play well. The first set was the Town Plan, which was to teach kids about traffic safety. He later made more sets focused on important issues. Now an estimated 400 million children and adults have LEGO sets. In the past 60 years, over 400 billion bricks have been sold. So every person on earth can have at least 75 bricks per person. (I must have at least 5,000 to 6,000 bricks at home.) Sadly he died on March 11, 1958, in Ribe, Denmark. So Mr. Ole Kirk Christiansen gave ideas, jobs, and joy to people everywhere. So that's why Mr. Ole Kirk Christiansen is my hero.