The Friday File: In 1974, Hungarian architecture professor Erno Rubik invents what is now known as the Rubik’s cube. It has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations, or 43 quintillion. Since its introduction in 1980, 400 million have been sold, and currently global sales are running at 15 million/year. The world record for the quickest solution is 4.59 seconds, and it took Mr. Rubik more than a month to initially solve his puzzle.