Hi there. I'm Washington Post reporter Lillian Cunningham. Stay tuned after the show to hear about my

latest podcast, Moonrise. It's the dark but true story of why we went to the moon and what we found

there. The full series is available now.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with RetroPod, a show about the past, Rediscovered.

Can you guess what company produces more tires in a year than Goodyear?

Here's a clue.

Those tires, well, you'll never see them in traffic. Still not got it? Here's another.

It's notorious for causing pain to souls of bare feet all over the world. Still guessing,

it's Lego, a company that started as a tiny manufacturer of wooden toys that built itself into an empire of plastic blocks that have provided kids with millions of hours of fun.

Though, why is it that adults are always the ones to step on them?

Anyway, the story of Lego starts in the 1930s in Denmark, with a master carpenter named

Ole Kirk Christensen.

With the Great Depression in full swing, Christensen desperately needed a way to earn money.

So he used his skill with wood to start a company that made all sorts of things, step ladders, ironing boards, and an entirely

new line of wooden toys. Yo-yo's, trucks, ducks on wheels. Christensen called his company Lego, a portmanteau of the Danish words for play and well.

According to David C. Robinson, author of a history of the Lego company,

Christensen ran the business all on his own while raising four sons.

Lego survived the Great Depression.

It survived the German invasion of Denmark.

And it even survived a fire that destroyed its factory,

including all of the blueprints for new toys.

In the 1940s, Lego began producing what it called automatic binding bricks.

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