Your Trivia For Today

     From Mental Floss:

Who got the lowest Social Security Number?

The SSA [Social Security Administration] had some control over where numbers were issued because of the early geographic distribution of the area number. The lowest numbers went to the northeast states, and while Maine, the most northeasterly of them, should have gotten the block of numbers starting in 001, that group number actually went to New Hampshire.

This was done so that the lowest possible SSN, 001-01-0001, could be given to Social Security Board Chairman and former New Hampshire governor John G. Winant. He passed on the number, so the SSA then offered it to John Campbell, a Regional Representative of the Federal Bureau of Old Age Benefits. He didn’t want it either. The SSA finally decided to just assign it to the first New Hampshire applicant, Grace D. Owen of Concord.