September has been declared “Apple Month” by Governor Deval Patrick and the state legislature. September sis also the month that Apple is expected to launch the iPhone5…so to honor both the apple and Apple we have compiled some Fun Facts you may not know about apples and Apple Inc!
1. Although apples are thought of as “All American”, apples originated in central Asia, on the land between the Caspian and Black Seas.
2. Apple was founded as a partnership on April Fool’s Day 1976 by three people who originally worked at Atari: Steven Gary Wozniak (1950- ), Steven Paul Jobs (1955-2011), and Ronald Gerald Wayne (1934- ). Apple was incorporated on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who sold his shares back for $800.
3. It was the Pilgrims that planted the first apple trees in the United States and since then it has become the second most productive fruit in the United States and is grown in all 50 states! Prior to that the crabapple was the only apple native to North America.
4. Contrary to popular belief Apple Computers didn’t start in a garage, it started in a bedroom in Los Altos.
5. In colonial time, apples were called winter banana or melt-in-the-mouth.
6. Apple-1 with the tagline ‘Byte into an Apple’ was the first personal computer to be released by Apple which was designed and hand built by Wozniak. It was sold for $666.66.
7. Johnny Appleseed was the nickname for John Chapman, a kind and generous American pioneer born in 1774 who planted apple seeds in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
8. The very first Apple logo was designed by Ronald Wayne and depicts Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree when he discovered gravity by an apple falling on his head; it has a poem all around its border. (Newton… a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought.) The logo was redesigned in 1977 by Ron Janoff to the bitten apple logo we know today.
9. Apples were the favorite fruit of ancient Greeks and Romans. Archeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples since at least 6500 B.C.
10. Steve Jobs also created a company called ‘Pixar’ which was later bought by Disney, making him the largest individual shareholder of Disney.
11. The largest apple picked weighed three pounds.
12. Before coming up with the name iPod, Steve had already decided its tagline as “1,000 songs in your pocket.”
13. Apples are a member of the rose family and 2,500 varieties of apples are grown in the United States.
14. The name “Macintosh” was inspired by a sticker on an apple.
15. Contrary to popular belief, there is no mention of an apple as the forbidden fruit in the Bible. It is referred to as “fruit from the Tree of Knowledge” with no specification as to which kind of fruit. It was Hugo Van Der Goes who first implicated the apple as the forbidden fruit in his 1470 A.D. painting, The Fall of Man. After that, it became popular to depict the apple as the forbidden fruit.
16. Steve Jobs dropped out of College after one semester.
17. Apples harvested from an average tree can fill 20 boxes that weigh 42 pounds each and it takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider.
18. To raise capital for their new company, Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen van and Steve Wozniak sold his Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator for $500.
19. The old saying, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.” This saying comes from an old English adage, “To eat an apple before going to bed, will make the doctor beg his bread.
20. Apple stores each sell an average of $93,150 worth of products every day, which is equivalent to $3,900 an hour or $65 a minute every day of the year.
Vargas & Vargas Insurance hopes you enjoyed this fun little comparison of Apples to Apple in honor of September “Apple Month”!
