Inventors Facts

The inventor of the Pringles can is buried in one. Fredric Baur was so proud of his creation that he requested part of his ashes be stored in a Pringles container after his death in 2008.

Garrett Morgan patented the safety hood in 1912 and had to hire a white actor to demo it - buyers refused to deal with a Black inventor. When an explosion trapped workers 120 feet under Lake Erie in 1916, Morgan descended into the tunnel at 3am wearing his hood and pulled 8 men out alive. The press barely named him. He later sold his traffic signal patent to GE for $40,000.

Lonnie Johnson, a NASA engineer, invented the Super Soaker by accident - a burst of water shot across his bathroom during a heat pump experiment. The toy went on to sell nearly $1 billion. When Johnson discovered Hasbro had underpaid his royalties for years, he took them to arbitration and won $72.9 million.