It doesn't matter what team you're on, if you invented the term and action of 'sacking' a quarterback, you're the greatest player of your franchise, period. That just so happens to be the case for David D. 'Deacon' Jones and the Los Angeles Rams. Deacon Jones played in an era of football where quarterback sacks where not an official stat and being correctly accounted for. Fortunately, because of Jones' ruthless tenacity to get to the quarterback every play and punish the quarterback, it forced the league to ackowledge what he was doand nw he's considered the prototype for what a defensive end should be.
Jones didn't only excel on the football field, he also was a quality baseball and basketball player during his youth. Following his college football career at Mississippi Valley University, Deacon Jones was selected 186th overall in the fourteenth round of the 1961 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams. Jones played eleven seasons out of the fourteen years of his career with Rams where he would rack up an unofficial number of 173.5 sacks throughout his career. To this day, that is the third-highest amount of sacks achieved by a player ever. The 8x Pro Bowler passed away from natural causes after suffering from both lung cancer and heart disease at the age of 74 in 2013. Jones' legacy will live forever for eventing the sack and being the gracious human being he was.
When we think of inventors, the image that comes to mind is usually that of a frazzled scientist toiling away in a lab, not celebrities pulled from the pages of Us Weekly. However, a number of well-known public figures hold patents for various innovations. Some are related to the work that made them famous, while others are offshoots of hobbies or just a single great idea.
Part of guitar wizard Eddie Van Halen's signature sound was his two-handed tapping technique, but letting all ten fingers fly while simultaneously holding up the guitar's neck could get a bit tricky. Van Halen came up with a novel way to get around this problem, though; he invented a support (top) that could flip out of the back of his axe's body to raise and stabilize the fretboard so he could tap out searing songs like "Eruption." While Van Halen was obviously interested in improving his guitar work, the patent application he filed in 1985 notes that the device would work with any stringed instrument. Want to tap out a scorching mandolin solo? Find someone selling Eddie's device.
It’s probably not surprising that James Cameron—who designed a submersible to take him to the deepest known part of the ocean—will often invent technology to make his films if what he needs doesn’t exist. He holds a number of patents, including US Patent No. 4996938, “apparatus for propelling a user in an underwater environment,” that he and his brother, Michael, created to film The Abyss and patented in 1989. The device is basically an underwater dolly equipped with propellers that makes it easy for a camera operator to maneuver in the water—and allowed Cameron to capture the shots he wanted for the 1989 film, part of which was filmed in an abandoned nuclear reactor.
In 1987 Jamie Lee Curtis designed and patented a disposable diaper that included a waterproof pocket that held baby wipes. She hasn't profited from her idea yet, though, since she refuses to license the patent until diaper companies make biodegradable products.
You know him as a rock legend, but Neil Young also loves trains—so much that he owns a stake in a model train manufacturing company and has an extensive collection. He also holds seven patents related to model trains, including Patent No. US5441223, "Model train controller using electromagnetic field between track and ground."