Little known Black history fact:

1. Little known Black history fact: • Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded The Journal of Negro History in 1916 and began Negro History Week in 1926, designating a week in February, because that month held birthdays for Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, this week went on to become Black History Month in 1976, designated by presidential proclamation.

2. Little known Black history fact: • Millions of people are indebted to the medical research of Dr. Charles Drew. As a world-renowned surgeon, medical scientist and educator, Dr. Drew was a medical pioneer by finding a way to preserve blood. He created the first blood bank and developed a way to efficiently store blood plasma.

3. Little known Black history fact: • Nathaniel Alexander was the first to patent the folding chair. His invention was designed to be used in schools, churches and at large social gatherings.

4. Little known Black history fact: • Charles B. Brooks invented the street sweeper in 1896. It was a truck equipped with brooms.

5. Little known Black history fact: • Andrew Jackson Beard invented the "Jenny Coupler" in 1897, a device which allowed train cars to hook themselves together when they are bumped into one another. The device saved the lives of many railroad workers, who originally had the dangerous job of hooking the moving cars together by hand.

6. Little known Black history fact: • In 1903, as chairwoman of the board for the newly founded St. Luke Bank and Trust, Maggie Lena Walker became the nation's first female bank president. She was said to have a "golden touch," and helped the Black community in many ways. She organized and served as president of the St. Luke Educational Fund, which helped Black children get an education; was national director of the NAACP; and was appointed by several Virginia governors to various posts.

7. Little known Black history fact: • Henry Brown created what is now known as a "strongbox", a metal container to store money and important papers that could be locked with a key.

8. Little known Black history fact: • African-American mechanical engineer, David Crosthwait, Jr. created the heating systems for the Rockefeller Center and New York's Radio City Music Hall. David Crosthwait, Jr., holds 39 U.S. patents and 80 international patents pertaining to heating, refrigeration and temperature regulating systems.

9. Little known Black history fact: • In 1897, African-American inventor Alfred Cralle patented the first ice cream scoop. His original design remains in wide use, even today.

10. Little known Black history fact: • W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is perhaps best known for his work in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and helping it to become the country's single most influential organization for African Americans.

11. Little known Black history fact: • In 1899, African-American golf fan Dr. George Franklin Grant received a patent for the world's first golf tee. Grant, however, never marketed his invention, instead giving the tees away to friends and fellow golfers.

12. Little known Black history fact: • Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles founded the first college for Black women in the United States in 1881. The school was named Spelman College after Laura Celestia Spelman Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller, who made a sizeable donation to the school.

13. Little known Black history fact: • Allensworth is the only California community to be founded, financed and governed by African-Americans. Created by Allen Allensworth in 1908, the town was built with the intention of establishing a self-sufficient, all-Black city where African-Americans could live their lives free of racial discrimination.

14. Little known Black history fact: • George Carruthers invented the far ultraviolet electrographic camera, used in the 1972 Apollo 16 mission. This invention revealed new features in Earth's far-outer atmosphere and deep-space objects from the perspective of the lunar surface. Carruthers was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 2003.

15. Little known Black history fact: • Artist Charles Alston founded the "306 Group", a club that provided support and apprenticeship for African-American artists during the 1940s. It served as a studio space for prominent African-American artists such as poet Langston Hughes; sculptor Augusta Savage; and mixed-media artist Romare Beardon.

16. Little known Black history fact: • After African-American performer Josephine Baker expatriated to France, she famously smuggled military intelligence to French allies during World War II. She did this by pinning secrets inside her dress, as well as writing them in invisible ink on her sheet music.

17. Little known Black history fact: • Henry Blair, the second African-American to receive a patent, invented a corn seed planter in 1834 and a cotton planter in 1836. Blair could not read or write and signed his patent with an X.

18. Little known Black history fact: • In 1938, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt challenged the segregation rules at the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham, Alabama, so she could sit next to African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune, whom she referred to as "her closest friend in her age group.”

19. Little known Black history fact: • The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon honored Ira Aldridge with a bronze plaque. He is the only African-American actor to receive this tribute.

20. Little known Black history fact: • African-American entrepreneur Reginald Lewis' 1992 gift to Harvard Law School was the largest single donation the school ever received from an individual at that time.

21. Little known Black history fact: • Mary Church Terrell was a lecturer, a women's rights activist and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). A master of languages, Terrell represented Black women in the American delegation to the 1904 International Congress of Women in Berlin. Of all the U.S. delegates, she was the only one to deliver her address in fluent German and French. In 1919, she received international recognition at the International Peace Congress in Zurich, where she spoke of the condition of Black America.

22. Little known Black history fact: • In 1845 Macon Bolling Allen became the first African-American to pass the bar and practice law in the United States.

23. Little known Black history fact: • Thomas J. Martin patented a fire extinguisher in 1872.

24. Little known Black history fact: • In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution banned Marian Anderson, who was known as the contralto of the century, from singing in Washington's Constitution Hall, which they owned. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group in response and sponsored an Easter morning concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Marian Anderson gave one of her most memorable performances to a crowd of 75,000 people.

25. Little known Black history fact: • Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr., Ph.D., became a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut in August 1979 later becoming the first African American in space having a total of 4 space flights.

26. Little known Black history fact: • Dr.Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893 and founded Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses (the first Black-owned hospital in America) in 1891.

27. Little known Black history fact: • James West's research in sound technology led to the development of foil-electret transducers used in 90 percent of all microphones built today and in most new telephones being manufactured.

28. Little known Black history fact: • In a 22-hour operation in 1984, Dr. Benjamin Carson, Sr., an African American surgeon, successfully separated a pair of twins born joined at the head. He was also named to the President's Council on Bioethics in 2004 by George W. Bush; Bush awarded Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.

29. Little known Black history fact: • Ralph Johnson Bunche, in 1950 was the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace prize for mediating the Arab-Israeli truce.

30. Little known Black history fact: • Educator and political leader Mary McLeod Bethune founded NCNW (National Counsel of Negro Woman) in 1935 and envisioned it to be an "organization of organizations“. This organization connects over 4 million woman worldwide!

31. Little known Black history fact: • George Washington Carver designed the concept of a moveable school, with teachers and equipment traveling to remote areas to instruct the poor in agriculture and nutrition. This concept was later adopted in underdeveloped areas around the world.

32. Little known Black history fact: • Alexander Miles of Duluth, Minnesota patented an electric elevator in 1887 with automatic doors that would close off the shaft way, thus making elevators safer.

33. Little known Black history fact: • Born in Washington, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. graduated from West Point in 1936 and began his military career at Fort Benning in Georgia. In 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps and took command of the 99th Fighter Squadron, the famous "Tuskegee airmen," as a lieutenant colonel. Davis became the first Black brigadier general in the history of the U.S. Air Force in 1954. In 1965, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

34. Little known Black history fact: • Politician and educator Shirley Chisholm survived three assassination attempts during her campaign for the 1972 U.S. presidential election. She was the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination and in 1968 she was the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

35. Little known Black history fact: • Elijah McCoy invented an automatic lubricator for oiling steam engines in 1872. The saying the real McCoy, meaning the real thing has been widely accredited to Elijah McCoy's invention.

36. Little known Black history fact: • Jan Ernst Matzeliger invented a shoemaking machine that increased shoemaking speed by 900%.

37. Little known Black history fact: • Thomas Edison may have invented the bulb in 1879, but it was Lewis Howard Latimer's carbon filament that made it practical for everyday use. Latimer was the only Black member of Thomas Edison's team of inventors. By creating a carbon filament for Edison's newly invented electric light bulb, Latimer solved two major design flaws: the bulb didn't last very long and it had a tendency to shatter when it got too hot.

38. Little known Black history fact: • Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable founded the city of Chicago. At age 20, DuSable sailed to America where he settled in Illinois and became a fur trader. He married an American Indian woman and developed a very successful business. When traveling from Canada, where he trapped furs, DuSable would stop at a place the Indians called Eschikcago or "place of smelly waters." In 1779, DuSable decided this would be a great place to build a trading post which soon developed into the settlement now known as Chicago.

39. Little known Black history fact: • Patrick Francis Healywas the nation's first Black to earn a Ph.D. Throughout his lifetime Healy received numerous medals and commendations. He was the 29th president of the prestigious Georgetown University from 1873-1882. As a tribute to his outstanding leadership during his tenure, Georgetown erected the Healy Building. It housed the administration center, a classroom and a dormitory.

40. To find these facts and more please visit: • http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/history/366-facts-inventions.jsp\ • http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/history/black-history-month.jsp