At the tender age of seven-years-old, Adrian Peterson watched his older brother die at the hands of a drunk driver. This particular incident led Peterson into his obsession with sports guiding him to become a five-star recruit that would commit to playing his collegiate ball with the University of Oklahoma Sooners. During his freshman year in 2004, Peterson set an NCAA record for rushing yards by a true freshman with a total of 1,925 yards. Throughout his three-season college career, Peterson would go on to finish third in all-time Sooner rushing yards with 4,041.
His stellar performance in college led him to be the 7th overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings where he had an instant impact setting an NFL record for most rushing yards in a single game with 296 yards. His most prominent years, Peterson spent in Minnesota earning a total salary of $94.2 million dollars before being suspended for accusations of negligent injury to a child in 2014. Since then, Peterson has become a journeyman around the league playing for teams like the New Orleans Saints, the Arizona Cardinals, and now the Washington Redskins. While he's signed multi-million dollar deals with two out of the three of those franchises and accumulated over $101 million in his NFL career, Peterson claims that he is broke.
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."