happy birthday lego

Today is LEGO's 50th birthday, or rather the anniversary of the patent approval for the original brick.

Check out LEGO.com.

Today's google search page

boing boing links to a 3:38 time lapse video of the building of the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, one of the largest sold (over 5000 individual elements).

gizmodo has a lego timeline and some LEGO brick curiosities:

• There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world's 6 billion inhabitants.
• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
• More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.
• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.
• 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.
• 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.
• More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.
• Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways.
• Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways.
• There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same color.
• 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.
• The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.
• 40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon.
• World-renowned author Douglas Coupland believes the LEGO brick represents a "language in itself."