Martin Luther King, Jr. was not originally named Martin Luther King, Jr.: he was born Michael King Jr. His father, the minister Michael King Sr., decided to change his own name in homage to the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther, at which point five-year-old Michael became Martin Luther Jr. Just one more reason to want to Be Like Mike. (Source)

King's final remarks in "I've Been to the Mountaintop" are usually read as an uncanny prediction of his death, but actually, he'd guessed a long time ago. When President Kennedy was shot and killed by a sniper in 1963, MLK forecasted that "This is what is going to happen to me also." Sometimes, it's better to be wrong. (Source)

King almost bit it a lot sooner, though. As a young boy, upset about his grandmother's death, young MLK jumped out a second-story window. Twice. Some things you have to try again, just to be sure. Like badminton. Or octopus. Or autodefenestration.
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Maybe this whole "last speech of Martin Luther King, Jr." thing seems all doom and gloom, but he occasionally took a break from saving the world to have a little fun. Just an hour or so before King's assassination, a bunch of SCLC folks had a knock-down drag-out pillow fight at the Lorraine Motel. (Source)

Nobody's perfect: in 1991, it was determined that Dr. King plagiarized large portions of his doctoral dissertation. We can't be sure why, but at least one scholar has proposed that King might have been pulling a fast one on negligent white professors. (Source)

King also smoked. But, to his credit, he knew he was a role model and tried to keep it a secret. (Source)

The FBI's code name for MLK was "Zorro." (Source)

Dr. K was the heir of Dorothy Parker. Yes, that Dorothy Parker. The wit. They'd never met. When he was killed, her estate passed to the NAACP, which still holds the rights to her work. (Source)