60 Fun Facts About Andrew Carnegie

In which Scottish town was Andrew Carnegie born in 1835?

He was born in a weaver's cottage with a single main room, shared with a neighbouring family.

What was Carnegie's father's trade?

Demand for damask collapsed and the family borrowed money to emigrate in 1848.

How old was Carnegie when his family emigrated to America in 1848?

They settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh.

What was Carnegie's first job in America?

He earned 1.20 dollars a week for 12-hour days, six days a week.

What was Carnegie's starting weekly wage as a bobbin boy?

A bobbin manufacturer named John Hay soon offered him two dollars a week to fire a boiler.

What special skill did the teenage Carnegie develop as a telegraph messenger boy?

He also memorised the faces of Pittsburgh's important men and the location of every business.

Which Pittsburgh colonel opened his 400-volume library to working boys on Saturday nights, inspiring Carnegie's later giving?

Carnegie resolved that if wealth ever came to him, other poor boys would get the same chance.

Which railroad executive hired Carnegie in 1853 and became his mentor and investment guide?

Scott made him superintendent of the Western Division at 24 and steered him into inside deals.

Carnegie's cousin Maria Hogan, whom he hired at the railroad, was the country's first female what?

He also hired his 16-year-old brother Tom as his personal secretary.

How did Carnegie's mother secure his first 500-dollar investment in the Adams Express Company in 1855?

She placed a 600-dollar mortgage on their 700-dollar house.

Carnegie arranged a merger between Theodore Woodruff's company and that of which inventor of the first-class sleeping car?

The sleeping-car investment was an early source of profit.

During the Civil War Carnegie was Superintendent of Military Railways and Union telegraph lines in the East. What did he jokingly call himself?

He got a scar on his cheek freeing a trapped telegraph wire.

Carnegie's Keystone company supplied steel for which landmark Mississippi River crossing at St. Louis, completed in 1874?

The St. Louis bridge was a proof of concept for steel and opened a new market.

In an 1868 memo Carnegie vowed to take no more than what annual income and give away the rest?

He planned to retire at 35 and study at Oxford; instead he kept going for another 33 years.

Which steelmaking method did Carnegie adopt to mass-produce steel cheaply?

It burned the carbon out of pig iron quickly; the resulting steel was ideal for rails but not for buildings.

Carnegie named his first steel plant, in Pennsylvania, after whom?

Thomson was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Carnegie's best customer.

In which year did Carnegie combine his assets to launch the Carnegie Steel Company?

By the late 1880s his works were the world's largest maker of pig iron, steel rails and coke.

Who bought Carnegie Steel in 1901, creating U.S. Steel?

U.S. Steel was the first corporation in the world capitalised at over a billion dollars.

For how much was Carnegie Steel bought out in 1901?

Carnegie's personal share was 225.64 million dollars, paid in 5 percent gold bonds.

Who secretly negotiated the Carnegie Steel buyout on Carnegie's behalf?

He was no relation to the later brokerage founder Charles R. Schwab.

Where were the nearly $230 million of bonds paid to Carnegie stored?

They were held by the Hudson Trust Company in trust for his secretary Robert Franks.

After selling his company, Carnegie surpassed whom as the richest American of the time?

He then spent the rest of his life giving the money away.

Roughly what share of his fortune did Carnegie give away in his last 18 years?

That was around 350 million dollars; the last 30 million went to charities after his death.

Carnegie's 1889 essay urging the rich to use their fortunes for society is known by what title?

It first appeared as "Wealth" in the North American Review; Gladstone had it reprinted in Britain.

Carnegie's 1889 essay expressed support for which two fiscal measures?

He wrote that heavy death duties mark the state's condemnation of "the selfish millionaire's unworthy life".

Complete Carnegie's famous line: "The man who dies thus rich dies ..."

It comes from the memo he wrote to himself at 33.

Carnegie's 1886 book Triumphant Democracy argued that which system was superior?

Its cover showed an upended crown and a broken sceptre, and it sold over 40,000 copies.

Which British prime minister became a friend of Carnegie and asked to have his "Wealth" essay published in Britain?

It appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette as The Gospel of Wealth.

How many Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929?

About 1,689 were in the United States and 660 in the United Kingdom.

Where did the very first Carnegie library open, in 1883?

His mother had laid the foundation stone during an 1881 family trip.

What condition did Carnegie attach to funding a community's library?

By 1908 his assistant James Bertram was handling the applications with a questionnaire.

Which Baltimore library founder did Carnegie call "my guide and inspiration"?

The Enoch Pratt Free Library opened in 1886.

The first Carnegie library to open in the United States was in which Pennsylvania steel town?

Braddock, Homestead and Duquesne libraries were owned by Carnegie Steel, which even delivered their heating coal.

Which composer conducted at the official opening of Carnegie Hall on 5 May 1891?

The hall, originally just the Music Hall, stayed in the Carnegie family until 1925.

Carnegie funded the construction of about how many pipe organs in churches and temples?

He showed no preference for any denomination.

The bloody 1892 labour confrontation at Carnegie Steel's main plant is known by what name?

It lasted 143 days; ten men died when 300 Pinkertons arrived by barge on 6 July.

Where was Carnegie while the Homestead dispute peaked?

He left the handling of it to Henry Clay Frick, whose reputation for anti-union sentiment was well known.

Which anarchist shot and wounded Frick during the Homestead crisis?

Berkman reasoned that with Frick eliminated, responsibility for Homestead would rest with Carnegie.

Carnegie belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose badly maintained dam caused which 1889 disaster?

Some 2,209 people died; Carnegie later built the town a new library.

To counter American imperialism, Carnegie personally offered $20 million to buy the independence of which territory?

That was the sum the US had just paid Spain; nothing came of the offer.

Which Scottish estate did Carnegie buy in 1898 as a summer home?

He paid about 85,000 dollars and crossed the Atlantic by liner each year.

Carnegie's New York mansion at 2 East 91st Street now houses which institution?

The surrounding neighbourhood is now called Carnegie Hill.

Carnegie waited until after his mother's death to marry. How old was he when he wed Louise Whitfield in 1887?

Their only child, Margaret, was born in 1897 and named after his mother.

Carnegie gave $25,000 a year to a board promoting what cause?

Its handbook was written entirely in reformed spelling.

Carnegie's 1905 pension fund for American college professors evolved into which organisation?

Church-related schools had to sever their religious ties to qualify.

What did Carnegie establish in 1904 to recognise civilian acts of heroism?

It spread to Britain and nine other European countries.

Carnegie paid $1.5 million in 1903 towards which building in The Hague?

He also gave 150,000 dollars for a Pan-American Palace in Washington.

Which dinosaur was named Diplodocus carnegii after Carnegie sponsored the expedition that found it?

He was so proud he sent plaster casts of the whole skeleton to museums across Europe and South America.

Carnegie donated $10 million in 1911 to speed the building of the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at which observatory?

George Ellery Hale led the project; the telescope saw first light in 1917, with Carnegie still alive.

Where is Carnegie buried?

His simple Celtic-cross gravestone lies a few yards from union leader Samuel Gompers.

Which university did Carnegie serve as Lord Rector from 1902 to 1907?

His 10-million-dollar Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland dwarfed the government's 50,000 pounds a year.

The Pittsburgh technical institute Carnegie founded in 1900 later became which university?

Carnegie seeded it with $2 million; it took its present name after merging with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in 1967.

Which giant cactus carries the scientific name Carnegiea gigantea in Carnegie's honour?

He also lent his name to a dinosaur, Diplodocus carnegii, and to towns in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.

In which Massachusetts town did Carnegie die of bronchial pneumonia in August 1919?

By then he had given away more than $350 million, and his last $30 million went to foundations, charities and pensioners after his death.

Which labour leader is buried only a few yards from Carnegie at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery?

Carnegie's deliberately simple gravestone takes the form of a Celtic cross.

The Church Peace Union's first conference in August 1914 was to be held on which shore?

Delegates were still on their trains when Germany invaded Belgium; the group survives today as the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Which $10 million body did he create in 1910 to work toward ending war?

At the 1913 dedication of the Peace Palace he predicted the end of war was as certain to come, and soon, as day follows night.

Carnegie's only child, born in 1897, was named after whom?

He refused to marry while his mother lived, wedding Louise Whitfield at 51 the year after her death; their daughter Margaret was born a decade later.

Which former president did Carnegie fund on an African expedition in 1909?

In return Carnegie asked him to mediate between the royal cousins ruling Britain and Germany, a scheme that collapsed when Edward VII died.

Which Dunfermline estate did he buy and open to the public?

A statue of Carnegie was raised there in 1913-14, and the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust still benefits the town of his birth.