He was the son of a carpenter

In 1901, Walt Disney was born on the second floor of a wooden cottage designed and built by his parents in Chicago. He was the fourth child of Elias Disney, a carpenter, and his wife, Flora.

“Mother was the architect and between the two, mother drew the plans, and mother bought the materials and dad was the builder and they worked like a team,” Walt’s older brother, Roy, said in a 1967 interview, according to a 1991 City of Chicago report.

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It cost them US$800 to build, according to The Walt Disney Birthplace. This was not an insignificant sum – Elias was making a dollar a day at the time.

“A dollar a day. Seven dollars a week. That’s all he made for the year, averaged for the year was US$7 a week,” Flora said at the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary, according to the Walt Disney Archives.

The house still stands today and has been restored to how it looked when the Disney family lived there.

He once played Peter Pan in a school play

When Walt was young, he played the part of Peter Pan in a school play – nearly four decades before the beloved animated classic would make its big-screen debut.

He was a high school dropout

When he was 16, Walt dropped out of high school to enlist in the army. Unfortunately, he was caught trying to join while underage and had to be content with volunteering with the Red Cross instead.

His first animation studio went bankrupt in less than a year

In 1920, Walt started his first animation studio, Laugh-o-Gram, in Kansas City, Missouri, where he produced animated cartoons based on fairy tales. Less than a year after opening the studio, Disney filed for bankruptcy.

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Mickey Mouse wasn’t his first cartoon

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Walt’s first cartoon, not Mickey Mouse. Oswald bears a striking resemblance to Mickey, but he was created in 1927 out of an animation agreement with Universal Pictures.

Unfortunately, Walt lost the rights to Oswald in 1928 and Universal began making animated shorts without him. After this devastating loss, Walt and his team were forced to come up with a new character, and Mickey Mouse was born.

Then-Disney CEO Bob Iger actually got the rights back to Oswald in 2006 after trading an ESPN sports announcer for the black-and-white cartoon character.

Mickey Mouse was originally called Mortimer Mouse

Mickey Mouse was originally called Mortimer Mouse until Walt’s wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it.

Lillian reportedly convinced him to change the name after she insisted that Mortimer sounded “too pompous” and that Mickey Mouse would be a more marketable name.

Mortimer has since morphed into Mickey Mouse’s wisecracking rival with the annoying catchphrase, “ha-cha-cha!”

He did not design the final version of Mickey Mouse

Even though we think of Walt and Mickey as partners, he did not actually create the final design of Mickey Mouse, according to Disney archivist Dave Smith. He provided initial sketches and ideas for the famous rodent, but it was Walt Disney Studios animator Ub Iwerks who animated the Mickey we know and love today.

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In fact, Walt reportedly never drew Mickey unless a fan specifically requested it for an autograph.

But he did voice the iconic character for two decades

When Mickey Mouse made his cartoon debut in 1929, Walt was unhappy with the way the character sounded, so he decided to voice Mickey Mouse himself, and continued to do so until 1947 when he said he became too busy with his growing business.

He was once the only person allowed to make a cartoon in full Technicolor

In 1932, Walt produced the first-ever full-colour Technicolor cartoon, Flowers and Trees, and from then until the end of 1935 he had exclusive rights to use the new three-colour animation process. All other colour cartoons had to be made the old way, using the out-of-date two-color process.

He was laughed at for wanting to create a feature-length animated film

It’s hard to imagine a time when animated films were considered a ridiculous concept, but when Walt set out to create the first feature-length cartoon in 1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – he was laughed at. The project became known in the industry as “Disney’s folly”.

But he surprised everyone when Snow White premiered to packed houses, and Walt won an honorary Academy Award (and eight Oscar statuettes: one normal-sized and seven dwarf-sized), for the breakthrough project, according to the Walt Disney Family Museum.

He still holds the record for most Academy Award wins ever

Walt Disney went on to win 32 Academy Awards throughout his career and still holds the record for the most Oscars won by an individual, according to the Walt Disney Family Museum.

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He bought the land that would become Disney World under fake names

By the mid-1960s, with the success of Disneyland reaching exponential heights, rumours swirled that Walt was looking to create an “east coast Disneyland”. When he was looking for a location for his next theme park venture, he stumbled upon the ideal swamplands around Orlando, Florida.

To keep his purchase of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) a secret, Walt created fake “shell companies” like Tomahawk Properties and the appropriately named M.T. Lott Co. to keep his identity discreet. A famous Orlando Sentinel headline proclaimed “We say it’s Disney!” in an article speculating about the mysterious “Project X”, or “The Florida Project”, which would soon become Walt Disney World.

He based the design of Main Street, USA, off the main street in his hometown

While Main Street, USA, in Disneyland and Walt Disney World is supposed to represent every-town Americana, Walt drew inspiration from his childhood hometown of Marceline, Missouri, where he lived from ages five to nine after the family moved from Chicago. The small rural town, with a population of just over 2,200, touts itself as Walt Disney’s hometown.

He had a secret flat above the firehouse on Main Street

One of the worst-kept secrets in Disneyland is Walt’s hideaway flat, located above the fire department on Main Street, where the Disney family would go to get some work done without being disturbed or to entertain high-profile Disneyland guests.

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To this day, you can still see a lamp lit in the window of the flat, day and night, to represent that “the boss” is still there in spirit.

His housekeeper died a multimillionaire

His housekeeper died a multimillionaire thanks to the stocks he gave her every year.

Thelma Howard was the Disney family’s long-time housekeeper, who became an important part of the family throughout her 30 years of employment. Walt often referred to her as the “real-life Mary Poppins”.

Every year for the holidays, Walt would gift her shares of Disney stock. By the time she died in 1994, she had amassed nearly US$9.5 million, and the fortune was divided among her surviving heirs.