10 Obscure facts about Martin Luther King Jr

Most of you are enjoying a day off to honor Martin Luther King Jr and so are we. We’ll see you tomorrow!

Dr King was the subject of one of the Irish band U2’s most famous songs, Pride (In the Name of Love).

King’s father was born “Michael King”, and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named “Michael King, Jr.,” until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His father soon changed both of their names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant leader Martin Luther.

In the Fall of 1963, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the FBI began telephone tapping King.

There are over 1,000 streets in the world named after Martin Luther King Jr

The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

Martin Luther King Jr Day was not recognized as a paid national holiday by all 50 states until 2000.

King accomplished a life-time of work in very little time. He skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. He travelled over 6 million miles in his lifetime and he was also the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at age 35.

The speech is known as “I Have a Dream” but those words were never in the original draft, they were ad libbed on the day.

According to Jesse Jackson, who was also present at the assassination, King’s last words on the balcony prior to his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: “Ben, make sure you play “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”

King’s autopsy revealed that although he was only thirty-nine years old, he had the heart of a sixty-year-old man, perhaps a result of the stress of thirteen years in the civil rights movement. He himself had verbally predicted he would not live past the age of 40.