In 1792, a small group of brokers gathered underneath a buttonwood tree near the Wall Street in New York City. Together, they signed an agreement to only trade stock to eachother. The Buttonwood Agreement became the foundation of the New York Stock and Exchange Board.

The Allied brokers soon began to look for a location to do business and in early 1793 they built the Tontine Coffee House. The coffee house became the prime location for exchanging stock in New York. The coffee house went on to become one of the busiest centers in the region for stock exchanging, auctioning, dances, and political rallies.

Candy canes date back to the seventeenth when Christmas trees became part of the Christmas celebration. Straight sugar sticks were used as decorations for these trees.In 1670 the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany said that if the sugar-sticks were bent into canes to represent a shepherd's staff he would share them with the children. These all white canes were used to help keep children quiet during the long winded holiday mass.

The first American reference t the candy cane is in 1847, when German immigrant August Imgard decorated the Christmas tree in his Wooster, Ohio home with candy canes.

No one knows when and why the candy cane's red and white stripes were added to the all white cane but Christmas cards before the 1900's depict the all white tree decoration while the cards post 1900's show the modern day candy stripes.

Rube Goldberg was a famous engineer who drew cartoons of inventions that did simple tasks in incredibly complex ways. Rubes cartoons made him famous and he received many awards. In fact, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959.

In honor of Goldberg, Purdue University created the first Rube Goldberg invention contest in which each entry must have at least 25 steps. In 2011, The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers set a new World Record for most steps in a Rube Goldberg Machine with 244 steps shattering the previous record of 230. The team is currently waiting for confirmation from the Guinness World Records Office.

Did you know that the origins of Nintendo date back more than 120 years? It all started with playing cards.

In 1889 Fusajiro Yamauchi, who was the great-grandfather of the current Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, began a company in Japan selling playing cards. He originally manufactured these cards for export, but in 1902, decided to sell them strictly Japan due to popularity. The company grew over the next five decades, and in 1953 the company started selling plastic playing cards. Because these cards were such a hit they started selling cards with Disney characters on them. At this point Nintendo started its transition to a image for children.

In 1969, Nintendo started manufacturing opto-electronics. This was the first time this type of technology had been used in toys and Nintendo was the pioneer in the technology. Nintendo evolved its technology into arcades and then into home systems. Finally, the famous Donkey Kong arcade game was launched in 1981, shortly after Nintendo launched its American office in New York. All of that history built up to the original Nintendo entertainment system which was launched in 1985.