Here's one from the "Betcha Didn't Know" file: Did you know that Louis Chevrolet, who co-founded the company that bears his name, and Zora Arkus-Duntov, who helped create the Chevrolet performance legacy beginning a half-century later, were both born on December 25? Talk about a coincidence.

The Swiss-born Chevrolet (born 1878) teamed up with William Crappo Durant to start Chevrolet. The company was an immediate success, but the two parted ways when  Durant wanted to start building inexpensive cars, while Chevrolet wanted to continue producing more powerful, more upscale vehicles.

Duntov was born in Russia (in 1909) and was living in New York City when he saw the Corvette Motorama car at the Waldorf Astoria in 1953. It was love at first sight and he joined Chevrolet as an engineer later that year to work on the exciting, but then-unappreciated sports car. He would later gain fame for creating the now-legendary "Duntov cam" for the small-block V8, his work in the development of Rochester mechanical fuel injection and his stewardship of the Corvette (he was eventually named its first chief engineer.