Did you know:

• that the video game, Pong, was invented by a guy who graduated at the bottom of his engineering class? Nolan Bushnell spent more time running the games at a local amusement park than he did on his studies at the University of Utah. His dreams of working for Disney's amusement empire were dashed when the company wouldn't hire him. Taking a boring job, Nolan daydreamed about electronic versions of popular games. He invented Pong, the first video game, and went on to found Atari Co. Not bad for a guy who had been at the bottom of his class only seven years earlier!

• that Charles Goodyear performed some of his experiments on rubber while in debtor's prison? He was there so often he referred to it as his "hotel". Chronically in debt because of poor business sense and ill health, Goodyear depended on the generosity of friends and family. Even after he unlocked the secret to vulcanizing rubber, he was unable to improve his financial situation. When he died, his estate was $200,000 in debt.

• that Albert Einstein was considered retarded, Isaac Newton was thought to be a slow learner, Joseph Priestly (discoverer of oxygen) never took a science course, and Louis Pasteur got a C in chemistry?

• that Thomas Edison showed an inquisitive spirit by the tender age of six? He set the family barn on fire "just to see what it would do" and he tried to make a friend fly by feeding him a gas-producing laxative.

• that neither Wilbur nor Orville Wright graduated from high school? However, they were both avid readers.

• that the inventor of condensed milk, Gail Borden, was so poor when he sought financing for his invention (a mere $600) that he appeared at investors' doors, unannounced, wearing ill-fitting, patched clothes?

• that the inventor of the electric motor was a blacksmith named Thomas Davenport? Described as "a brilliantly unsuccessful inventor", Davenport invented the first rotary electric motor. In 1836 he headed out -- on foot -- from his Vermont home to file a patent application at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C. By the time he got there, he had squandered away his money and couldn't afford the $30 filing fee so he turned around and went home. When he later mailed in his application with money he'd raised, the Patent office was destroyed in a fire. He did finally get credit for his invention on Feb. 5, 1837.

• that after Walter Hunt patented the safety pin in 1849, he sold the rights to it for $400?

• that as a health precaution, Alexander Graham Bell covered the windows in his home to block out the harmful rays of the full moon?

• that Henry Ford's highly touted assembly line wasn't such a hit with his workers? They complained that they were slaves to machines and by 1913 Ford had to hire 1,000 workers to keep one hundred.

• that Orville Wright's first flight which was, in hindsight, responsible for the birth of the aviation industry, lasted a mere 12 seconds?