Every Lego builder owes a word of thanks to Ole Kirk Christiansen (born 7 April 1891), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932.

In 1934, his company came to be called “Lego”, from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means, “Play well”.

It expanded to producing plastic toys in 1947. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them “Automatic Binding Bricks”.

Since the 1960s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including town and city, space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west.

In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.

Today, Legos are everywhere, in theme parks, video and board games, retail stores, clothing, film and television, movies, etc.

So when a Legos Convention came to our town, my son an avid Lego fan wanted to go. So off we went with camera in hand and snapped up these wonderful photos of the hard and wondrous work that many men and women put into building these outstanding works of art.

So next time you snap two Lego pieces together, think of Ole Kirk Christiansen and “play well.”

May the force be with you.