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| Displaying business Anecdotes: 506 Found |
Hearst Denied
James Bennett, no fan of rival publisher William Randolph Hearst, was one day ir...
WorldCon
Many venture capitalists firmly believe that informal measures often give a bett...
Glass Menagerie?
In the mid-1950s, Bob Wolff became the voice of Madison Square Garden. "The reas...
Piece of Luck
In April 2003, in a bid to bring happiness and good luck to his country in a tim...
General Somervell: Key Insight
One day during his tenure as chief of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Pr...
Wood Worms
With his brother Wilson, Addison Mizner once ran an "antiquing" factory which tr...
Carl Sagan: BHA
Software designers often bestow pet names upon their projects. When Apple progra...
Cavalleria Rusticana
One day an organ-grinder, stationed outside Pietro Mascagni's apartment, began p...
Born Every Minute?
Early in his career, P. T. Barnum created an exhibit, entitled "The Happy Family...
GIGO
Harold Alexander had a curious way of dealing with unfinished business: At the e...
Publisher's Toast
One evening during the Napoleonic wars, the English poet Thomas Campbell caused ...
Mark of Distinction
Charles Steinmetz was once called out of retirement by General Electric to help ...
Shopping Spree
"I was walking down Madison Avenue," Tony Randall once recalled, "and I saw a ve...
Galbraith vs Galbraith
Shortly after serving as US ambassador to India, the famous American economist J...
Donald Trump: The Donald
Shortly after the construction of the twin-towered Time Warner Center in Manhatt...
Cousins
The financier Otto Kahn, famed for his patronage of the Metropolitan Opera House...
Que Pasa.com
Before the dot-com crash at the turn of the millennium, author Ruben Martinez wa...
20th Century-Fox?
Despite his pioneering role as founder of Twentieth Century-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuc...
Commonwealth Sentinel
Lionel Burleigh's Commonwealth Sentinel, advertised on billboards as "Bri...
Bridge To Paradise?
In 2002, Ian Brown attended a fashion show called 'Viva Italia' in Toronto. "Sop...
Billion Dollar Question
In order to circumvent laws barring businesses from owning property out of state...
Rogers Unwilling?
Will Rogers was once asked by a piano manufacturer to compose a short testimonia...
Jet Magazine
On November 1st, 1951, Jet magazine was founded by John H. Johnson to cel...
Petty Cash
Commodore Gordon Bennett, the son of New York Herald founder James Gordon...
Dionne Warwick: Psychic Friend
Over the course of her long career, Dionne Warwick pursued a number of business ...
Cool Customer
One day long before his incarnation as a railway mogul, James Cooley worked as a...
P. T. Barnum: Lexical Perpl...
In 1841, P. T. Barnum purchased Scudder's American Museum in New York, which he ...
Ash and Burn?
Among Bob Wolff's duties as the voice of Madison Square Garden was ad-libbing li...
Richard Branson: Bottom Line
Having built Virgin Records into a respected label, Richard Branson decided the ...
Day of Judgement? (long)
Farrar, Strauss & Co's stable of authors often acted as readers for the firm. Ar...
Crazy Idea
Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold once sent Bill Gates a memo o...
Ttlly Brllnt!
The famed florist Max Schling once ran a brilliant ad in The New York Times: The...
Bill Gates: Bundle of Crap
At the turn of the Millennium, Bill Gates went head to head with the United Stat...
London Bridge
One day in April 1968, Robert McCollough learned that London Bridge was slated f...
Gasbag
One evening, the rival lawyers Joseph Choate and Chauncey M. Depew found themsel...
Oil Baron?
Thales was often dismissed as little more than a flighty philosopher; his suppos...
Lieberman-Cheney Debate
After his stint as George Bush's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney entered the b...
Banker's Banker
One day the legendary banker Amadeo Peter Giannini (whose Bank of America Nation...
Childish Question?
George Bernard Shaw was once asked by a manufacturer of electric razors to endor...
New and Improved
At the Comdex Spring 1998 Convention, Bill Gates unveiled a "new and improved" W...
Diane Farr: Engagement Cards
"I got engaged about a year and a half ago," Diane Farr recalled in 2004, "and I...
The Jig is Up?
Sam Walton inspired Wal-Mart "associates" (ie. employees) with his own attentive...
Vanderbilt Justice
Cornelius Vanderbilt, returning home after a long absence, was dismayed to disco...
Joe L. Hergmensheicken?
Posters once inadvertently announced that novelist Joseph Hergesheimer and criti...
Poor Balzac!
A Parisian bookseller, having pegged Balzac as a promising young writer, decided...
Retro Rally?
Every Fourth of July weekend, between eighty and a hundred thousand bikers and g...
Optimist?
One day in 1996, Kenny Rogers found himself discussing his career with his manag...
Strange Decision?
The year 2000 found Drew Nieporent a busy man, managing numerous restaurants (in...
Groucho Marxist?
The noted humorist Robert Benchley once applied for a bank loan - and was horrif...
Vanderbilt
The famed spirtualist Woodhull sisters counted Cornelius Vanderbilt among their ...
John Glenn: Profound Thought
John Glenn, the first American astronaut in space, was once asked to describe hi...
Bureaucrapic Process?
Soon after he became mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan was approached by a g...
Amtrak Sunset (long)
While researching an article on the so-called "land-cruise business" in 2002, Jo...
Horace Greeley: Toilet Paper
While traveling by train in New York one day, Tribune founder Horace Gree...
Boston Beer Co.
Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch was once asked how he could possibly justif...
Keating Five
Shortly after his Lincoln Savings and Loan declared bankruptcy (with over $2 bil...
241-0241
In 2003, at the instigation of the Department of Homeland Security, a secure pho...
Little Surprise
Following the publication of James Carroll's Mortal Friends in 1978, the ...
Over the Top
In March 2003, Teamtalk CEO David Ware and the chief executive of MCS Digital fo...
Fitting Solution?
So fond of cigars were producers Dan Staley, Rob Long and Tom Anderson that they...
Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway...
In 1992, Ernest Hemingway's sons (John, Patrick and Gregory) formed Hemingway Lt...
Elaine's Restaurant
Though Elaine Kaufman managed to lure customers to her restaurant on 73rd street...
Sinthetic
In 2003, Utah-based exotica retailer Eric Ward won a spot on PETA's official lis...
McRevenge
One day S. I. Hayakawa was dismayed to learn that a large American fast-food cha...
Enron Meetings
"Dick Cheney finally responded today to demands that he reveal the details of th...
Tip Off
"Robert Wood Johnson, the former chairman of Johnson & Johnson, was known to be ...
Dinah Shore Ruling
Dinah Shore once attempted to claim several dresses as business expense deductio...
George Bernard $haw
MGM studio chief Samuel Goldwyn once attempted to purchase the film rights to se...
John Patterson: You're Fired!
Former NCR boss John Patterson was thought by many to be the paradigmatic corpor...
Drapeau's Baby
"The Olympic Games can no more lose money," legendary Montreal mayor Jean Drapea...
Kleenex Issue
Stan Brakhage was once engaged by the Scott Paper Company to produce a commercia...
Farm Hand?
While visiting an Oxford college farm one day, the noted classical scholar A. C....
Paul Newman: Newman's Own
In 1998, Paul Newman was overjoyed to see his eponymous line of food products re...
Cash Cow
In Britain, banks are required to accept any legible check, irrespective of the ...
Life at the Googleplex
"People are pretty creative and wild here," Google co-founder Larry Page once re...
Blooming Awful
The head of Bloomingdale's department store in New York once sponsored a Kaufman...
James Baker: Enron Prize
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was pleased, in 2001, to have his pub...
Tommy Chong: Tommy Bong?
In 2001, Tommy Chong, famed for his roles as a pot-head in the ...
Manufacturing Mistakes
"If you think supply-chain management is a boring topic, listen to one of Hau Le...
Peter Principle
In 1969, after being rejected by no fewer than twenty publishers, professor Laur...
Taxing Credibility
While having lunch in a restaurant one day, Art Buchwald was asked by a business...
Fine Buzz
In the early 1970s, Donald Fine, the head of a small publisher called Arbor Hous...
Young Walt Disney: Southern...
"Walt Disney made his first little nest egg as an 18-year-old ambulance driver i...
Hedge Fund
Jim Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, was once asked a...
eBay
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar named his company after California's tech-savvy San ...
Brown and Associates
Fresh out of their respective schools, future Hollywood producers David Brown an...
USBS?
One day during his tenure as America's Postmaster general, Winton Blount called ...
Fifth Column? (long)
One day during her first year as Ann Landers, Eppie Lederer printed a letter fro...
Market Niche?
After an interview in Los Angeles one day, Arnold Schwarzenegger was escorted to...
George & the Egg
One day King George stopped to have an egg at a small village inn - and was shoc...
Juggler and Drowner
"W.C. Fields was engaged to work at Fortescue's Pier, in Atlantic City, for ten ...
Short Article
A magazine once sent J. Paul Getty a check for two hundred pounds and a request ...
Wily Woolworth
When Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Woolworth's store, a merchant dow...
Estée Lauder Fragrance
Estée Lauder, whose tears once convinced Bloomingdales Chairman Marvin Traub to ...
Michael Cowpland: Losing To...
Corel founder Michael Cowpland was once the subject of an amusing ...
Justin Timberlake: Lovin' It
In 2004, McDonald's began using lines from Justin Timberlake's "I'm Lovin' It" i...
Jeff Taylor: We Rock!
Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com (the world's biggest online job-search site)...
Darrell Issa: Fraudster
In 1972, future Republican California congressman Darrell Issa and his brother B...
Alfred Sloan: Groupthink
"Gentlemen, I take it that we are all in complete agreement on the decision here...
Johnny Unitas: First Fidelity
In 1981, former Baltimore Colts star Johnny Unitas did a series of radio spots t...
Howard Hughes: Memo Writer
Intense germophobia was far from Howard Hughes's only eccentricity. His daily ro...
John Zogby: Pollster for Hire
"John Zogby was hired by the conservative New York Post, and appeared on Fox New...
Anglo-Saxon Swine!
While working in Paris in 1949, Brendan Behan - a housepainter by trade - was as...
Ray Kroc: What a Kroc
One day while driving in Southern California, McDonald's chief Ray Kroc paid a s...
Smart Asset
As editor of The Smart Set, H. L. Mencken took Joseph Conrad under his wi...
Used Car Salesman
When he was nineteen years old, the future business tycoon Jim Pattison got a jo...
Mitsubishi Motors: Special ...
In 2000, regulators from Japan's transport ministry - investigating a product li...
OOP$
One night, Bernard Baruch received a telephone call in the middle of a dinner pa...
Whore of Babylon
Scandalized clergymen across the United States demonized Sarah Bernhardt from th...
Connoisseur
Noted New York Times editor Mervyn Rothstein once attended a performance ...
The Ring of Hypocrisy?
In the wee hours of a certain morning in the year 2000, some 3,000 Arizona resid...
Jethro Bull?
When future Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson teamed up with bassist Glenn Corni...
Wattle
"I once did a deal with Tiny Rowlands about selling wattle in East Africa," Jim ...
Circle Jerk?
Before crashing at the turn of the Millennium, shares in such Internet companies...
Bobbing With Willy?
Shortly after the tragic events of September 11th, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole joi...
Barbie Liberation Organisation
"Naturally, there are periodic uprisings against Barbie. In the early 1990s, Mat...
Herman J. Mankiewicz: Romeo...
Herman J. Mankiewicz, convinced that Three Comrades would make more money...
Trailer Trash Barbie
In the early 1990s, a San Francisco artist named Paul Hansen began selling "Barb...
Back-Office Oracle?
"The sport of dumpster diving - sifting through a rival's rubbish - is a way of ...
Fiona Apple IIe?
At the turn of the millennium, a business survey compared the pop culture wisdom...
Henry Ford: 4719?
One day, a man visiting the Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan happened to encou...
Concorde Pricing
Irked by Concorde's $97 million loss in 1981, Lord King of Wartnaby, a Conservat...
Dirty, My Ass?
Former Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff once visited a factory with ties to t...
Sarah Michelle Gellar: Boog...
In 1981, four-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared in her first big role - in...
Chris Kattan: Retarded Comm...
Shortly after applauding Sean Penn's role as Sam Dawson in Jessie Nelson's ...
Harvey's Last Words
"Until Fred Harvey came along in the 1880s, service in the railroad industry was...
Unexamined Life?
William Randolph Hearst got his start in business after begging his father, a go...
What The Hecht?
Though he was earning $2,500 every week promoting real estate during the Florida...
Farrar, Strauss & Cox
During Word War II, the legendary publisher Roger Strauss worked in the New York...
Duke Sellington?
One day Duke Ellington visited Zion's Book Store and asked its owner (Sam Weller...
Chelsea Hardaway: Bullfighter
In June 2003, management consultant Chelsea Hardaway and her colleagues at Deloi...
Rickenbacker
When the Douglas Aircraft Company was competing with Boeing to sell Eastern Airl...
Rent-a-Wreck
After leaving university in 1972, David Schwartz set up Rent-a-Wreck... as a jok...
Mary Kay
While working with Stanley Home Products early in her sales career, Mary Kay won...
Black Tuesday
On October 20th, 1929, the noted Yale University economist Irving Fisher declare...
James Bond, 00738958362?
In October 2000, Roger Moore was stunned to learn that his bank, Credit Suisse, ...
Shamanship?
One day a train plowed into P.T. Barnum's star circus elephant, Jumbo. Was Barnu...
Thomas Jefferson: Sacred an...
Thomas Jefferson was not responsible for the final version of the most stirring ...
Elephant?
P. T. Barnum once employed an elephant to do the plowing on his farm. A neighbor...
Just Compensation?
While working for the Gold & Stock Co. (a telegraph company which provided gold ...
Ash and Burn?
As a broadcaster, Mel Allen discovered first-hand the perils of live television ...
Edison Cement
"One of the metropolitan area's earliest and most outspoken concrete evangelists...
Timely Reply
Henry Ford was once asked why, when problems arose, he typically visited his exe...
Watch This!
While visiting a speakeasy one day, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker were show...
Going Down?
Shortly after the creation of the Actors' Equity Association (in 1913), George M...
Marcus Loew: Fuzzy Thinking
When Joseph Kennedy was named chairman of Pathe (a Hollywood studio) in 1926, ma...
Broken Windows?
"Bill Gates and the president of General Motors have met for lunch, and Bill is ...
Ralph Nader: Grim Scene? (l...
While hitchhiking to and from work in the late 1950s, Ralph Nader witnessed many...
Layaway Plan?
One day during the early investigations into Enron's balance-sheet shenanigans, ...
Enron Scandal
When the Enron scandal first broke, President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, bo...
Libeskind & Wife
The architect Daniel Libeskind, famed for his designs for the buildings which re...
Hairy Situation?
Disney is famous for its strict enforcement of employee dress codes and grooming...
Life in Plastic
In 1997, the Danish bubblegum pop band Aqua released a song called "Barbie Girl"...
Millar's Ploy
Following the success of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, the publisher Andrew...
Paperless Office?
"In 1993, Jay Chiat [the boss of Chiat/Day, an American advertising agency], had...
Woodstock (long)
One day in the late 1960s, two young men (struggling with writer's block while d...
Time Management
Channing H. Cox once visited Washington to call on Calvin Coolidge, whom he had ...
Deadline
Though Michael Gordon, a former theatrical director, began his Hollywood career ...
Corporate Fraud
In a presidential address to the nation in October 2002, George W. Bush called f...
Ford Accounting
Before assuming the helm of Chrysler Coproration, Lee Iacocca was president of t...
Chicken Farmer
Victor Borge - having purchased a chicken farm - was confronted one day by a fri...
World Peace
In the early stages of World War I, Henry Ford - aiming to appeal to heads of st...
Planet Hollywood
As a co-founder of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain (with Bruce Willis, Dem...
Unprincipled Playwright
Sheridan, whose financial affairs were in perpetual turmoil, was once beseeched ...
Lucky Cynic
After disposing of several old-time Sicilian gangsters, the legendary New York m...
Jeffrey Shyster
Jeffrey Archer's overweening ambition was apparent from his days as a student at...
Richard Branson: Branson on...
One day Virgin Records founder Richard Branson called a low-cost carrier called ...
Crooked Kennedy
Joseph Kennedy (JFK's father and the patriarch of the Kennedy clan) became one o...
Numbers Racket
"Truth in advertising, of course, has never been a strength of the real-estate b...
Lazy Laszlo Biro?
While working as a journalist (with a Hungarian newspaper called ...
Neeleman Solution
JetBlue founder David Neeleman was once asked what one thing might save the rest...
Route One Christmas Catalog
In 2003, Route One's Richard Boissevain learned that the one of his employees (a...
Dennis Kozlowski: Roman Orgy
Among disgraced Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski's dubious business expenses was an ext...
Ryanair Logo
In November 2003, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary ordered staff to change the ...
Sergey Brin: Google IPO
Despite pleas from Wall Street (and a market cap estimated at more than $2 billi...
J6Megalomaniac
Vivendi Universal chief Jean-Marie Messier was never noted for his modesty. Thou...
Bob Newhart: Young Accountant
After graduating from Loyola University with a degree in accounting (in 1952), B...
Bill Gates: Charity Case
One day in 2003, Microsoft chief Bill Gates met with Tom Brokaw at a humble Sout...
Brian Roberts & Comcast
The advent of Sansabelt pants compelled Comcast founder Ralph Roberts to close h...
Tom Peters: In Search of Ex...
In 1982, management gurus Tom Peters and Robert Waterman transformed the market ...
Donald Trump: How to Get Rich
In March 2004, Donald Trump published a book entitled How to Get Rich. Ju...
George W. Bush: Bushi!
In February 2004, a Chinese businessman was inspired to name a new product after...
Google Lawsuit
In January 2004 Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, issued ...
AK-MP3s
In February 2004, a British-based company partly owned by former Russian rock st...
Lew Wasserman: Talent Agent
"We were going out to Universal one day," MCA agent Jay Kanter once recalled of ...
The Doors: Squeaky Clean
The Doors once considered allowing General Motors to use their classic song "Lig...
Young Donald Trump: Buildin...
Donald Trump was breaking promises at an early age. "As a kid, I was making a bu...
Donald Trump: Big Philistine
Donald Trump was once asked which work of architecture had impressed him the mos...
Donald Trump: Bankrupt
"I was walking down Fifth Avenue with Marla Maples in 1991," Donald Trump once r...
Gene Simmons: Kiss Kasket
In 2001, KISS unveiled the newest addition to a range of products which already ...
David Siegel: Resignation
In April 2004, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno announced that David Siegel had resi...
Ross Johnson: Fetching Moment
"The model perk hog [in the 1980s] was Ross Johnson, the C.E.O. of RJR Nabisco, ...
FTSE Fantasy Contest
In March 2001, financial astrologer Christeen Skinner, professional investor Mar...
Milton Reeves: Octo-Auto
"Milton Reeves admired Pullman railway cars. Strangely, although Reeves was smar...
Hungerford Rocket
"In 1929, Daniel, Floyd, and William Hungerford stripped a 1921 Chevrolet down t...
Buddha, Inc.
In May 2004, Japanese priests stopped a candy company in the ancient capital of ...
Mark Cuban: Great!
In August 2003, Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year old girl in a Colora...
Ahmed Chalabi: Fraudster
"On April 9, 1992, a military tribunal in Jordan delivered a two-hundred-and-twe...
Alex Rodriguez: A-Rod's Pac...
In February 2004, security at New York City's Trump World Towers went ballistic ...
George Parker: Monopoly
"Monopoly was not invented by [Parker Brothers co-founder] George Parker. When h...
The Replacements: Big Stink
The Replacements once played a showcase gig for a group of record industry bigwi...
Bob Guccione: Penthouse Mar...
"In a scheme to raise cash through subscriptions, [Penthouse founder Bob ...
Korn: Y'All Want a Sellout?
Korn once made an anticorporate radio song called "Y'All Want a Single" (see lyr...
Margaret Thatcher: Buy British
"At the height of her 'Buy British' campaign, [Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher]...
Emo Philips: Lemonade Stand
As a child Emo Philips often ran a lemonade stand in the summer. "At my lemonade...
Bruce Willis: Screwball Inv...
In 1992, Bruce and Demi Moore moved to Hailey, Idaho with their infant daughter ...
James Fisk: Robber Barrons
In 1869, the railroad financier and speculator James Fisk joined forces with fel...
Young Bill Gates: $5 Bill
William H. Gates III had business on his mind from the very beginning. One day w...
Right Sentiment?
Georgia governor Lester Maddox once lobbied against his state's creation of a co...
Profitless Locality
Lt. Joseph Ives visited the Grand Canyon in 1861. "Ours has been the first, and ...
Eddie Blizzard?
Eddie Izzard encountered some difficulty on his first job: selling ice cream in ...
Anything...?
Groucho Marx once received a form letter from his bank manager which concluded: ...
Pure Ignorance?
For Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, building a personal computer in...
Big Production?
Producer Jerry Weintraub started his career as an agent and concert promoter. In...
War of Attrition
In the 1890s, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal became engaged i...
Gold Mine
When Jerry Reinsdorf (with the assistance of state Governor Jim Thompson) duped ...
Piggy
One day "Armour and Company" founder Philip Armour decided to reward several emp...
CFO?
Thurber was once summoned to his bank to discuss an overdrawn account. Prompted ...
What a Weenie
Mickey Rooney's record as a entrepreneur was not without its patchy spots. After...
Bad Computer Predictions
"I think there is a world market," IBM chief Thomas Watson famously declared one...
Morale-Booster
"To keep up morale in my staff," theatrical producer William A. Brady once recal...
Zoom Zoom Zoom!
In 2000, racy lingerie ads for Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz featuring Anna ...
Driving Ambition?
Among the merchandise which Bill Blass licensed for production and ennobled with...
Canine Brothel
In March 2003, German artist Karl-Friedrich Lentze applied for permission from B...
Good Harvest
Cyrus McCormick went bankrupt after the panic of 1837. He lost his farm and ever...
Tiger Woods Endorsement Deal
In September 2000, Tiger Woods (who was playing golf at the age of two and beati...
ENZA
During the 1992 America's Cup competition, many unusual rumors circulated about ...
Leading the Revolution
The publication of Tom Peters's In Search of Excellence (in 1982) kicked ...
Verbal Boxer?
In the late 1990s, after research confirmed that prunes have an image problem ("...
Dot-Bomb?
Even after the bursting of the dot-com speculative bubble at the turn of the mil...
Dwight Eisenhower: Commence...
General Dwight Eisenhower was once called upon to address a graduating class at ...
Wily Dell
Like many wily businessmen, Michael Dell was adept at oiling the political machi...
Smiley Face
"Back in 1963, Harvey Ball was asked by an insurance company to come up with a s...
Seasoned and Expert? (long)
It was Alan Greenspan's cozy links with the rich and powerful which produced the...
PAL
In 1967, Pacific Airlines (PAL), a commuter airline on the West Coast, hired awa...
Last Call for Carson Daly
"The reporter had been told by a reliable source what makes Jeffrey Zucker [the ...
Made In Japan
"When... [former Vice President John] Garner visited Tokyo en route to the Phili...
Gilbert in a Pickle
Among W. S. Gilbert's neighbors at Grims Dyke (his mansion in Stanmore just outs...
Back-Stabber
One day in 1992, Time Warner's Jerry Levin visited the company's chief, Nick Nic...
OPM
In 1973, Jerry Reinsdorf, having learned how to establish tax shelters while wor...
Filth Mart
At the turn of the millennium, Drea de Matteo and her boyfriend opened a hip urb...
Cancerous Censorship?
Henry Miller's sexually explicit Tropic of Cancer was deemed obscene and ...
Headhunter
"When [Leon Levy's] Oppenheimer [Funds] hired Lazard [Freres] to sell its pionee...
Model Insurer?
In April 2003, Ray Jones announced that his company's 1.5 acre Model Railway Vil...
Kroc
Legendary McDonald's chief Ray Kroc was no great fan of independent-minded franc...
Dennis Hope: Looney?
One day in November 1980, Dennis Hope, an unemployed ventriloquist going through...
Meat Packers
After living for seven unforgettable weeks among the stockyard workers in Chicag...
Swoooosh!
In 1997 Monica Seles signed an endorsement deal with Nike. Among the terms of th...
Mattel Blooper
In 1993, Mattel released a new doll named 'Earring Magic Ken' featuring Barbie's...
Military Intelligence
In 1943, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombed a nondescript printing plant i...
Branch of Reason
In 1952, the Pittsburgh Pirates finished an abysmal season with 112 losses - des...
British Leyland
British Leyland Chairman Lord Donald Stokes was something of an optimist. "This ...
Good Vibe
In 1993, publisher John Rollins and editor Alan Light launched a hip-hop magazin...
Francis Xavier McNamara: Di...
One evening in 1950, tarpaulin manufacturer Francis Xavier McNamara was inspired...
Short Temper
In 2000, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein outlawed shorts on men. The sight of men...
Sears
While working as a railroad agent in Redwood, Minnesota, Richard Sears discovere...
One-Track Barnum
Barnum's business acumen did not desert him on his deathbed. His last words? "Ho...
Build It and...?
George Balanchine once jokingly told Peter Martins "You know, dear,
we should c...
Andy Grove & The Scrooge Memo
Intel Chairman Andy Grove was not noted for his generosity. During his tenure as...
Suckers
In order to finance a new edition of Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson decided to offe...
Sylvan Goldman: Shopping Ca...
"Shoppers in the 1930s were used to carrying baskets and found the new contrapti...
Brave New World?
Union leader Walter Reuther once visited an auto factory in Cleveland whose mana...
Fine Company
In 1961, in a last-ditch effort to meet the cost of living in his Irish castle, ...
Tony Wilson & Factory Records
"Real-life British pop impresario Tony Wilson made and lost a lot of money in th...
Wizard of Hrmohz?
With asset prices ballooning at the turn of the millennium, Federal Reserve Boar...
Efficiency Expert?
Henry Ford once enlisted an efficiency expert to examine the operation of his co...
Sports Coverage
"Nike's dominance of the sneaker business since the late '80s has been predicate...
Amazon.con
The media savvy e-tailing tycoon Jeff Bezos founded online bookseller Amazon.com...
Microshaft?
One day at the start of the "browser war" with Netscape, Microsoft Chief Technol...
Vertical Integration
A firm believer in vertical integration, Henry Ford produced virtually everythin...
Pop Quiz
Why did John Matthews buy several tons of scrap marble from company overseeing t...
Microsoft: MSFT
Thoughout its history, Microsoft has been embroiled in legal battles - first wit...
Frank Fleer: Flubber?
In 1906, Frank H. Fleer's 'Frank H. Fleer Corporation' introduced the world's fi...
JFK & the Stock Market
Shortly after blocking a rise in steel prices in 1961, JFK was visited by a busi...
Justin Timberlake: Mouth Fo...
Justin Timberlake once "jokingly" told "Hot 97" about a certain bedroom encounte...
NBC
In 2000, David Letterman had major heart surgery. "When I went in for my quintup...
First Impressions
In 1903, Milton Hershey switched from making caramel products to chocolate bars....
Swallow Sidecar
In the 1920s, William Lyons founded the Swallow Sidecar Company Limited. When th...
Harry Potter
The dominance of J. K. Rowling's (and Lemony Snickett's) books on the ...
Men in Blue
"The idea that success and a strong corporate culture go hand in hand dates back...
Sure Thing
Famed financier J. P. Morgan was once approached by a man on Wall Street and ask...
Fair Profit
"I set up my first stall at a one-day fair at Axbridge, Somerset," Sir Billy But...
Music Business
While hosting a party one evening, Sibelius was asked by a fellow musician why h...
Sensational Notion
During its sojourn in America, one of Jean Francois Millet's classic paintings w...
Watchmen
In 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched a periodical called "The Watchman" - a...
Tarzan Rights
In 1931, MGM chief Irving Thalberg, bent on acquiring the film rights to Edgar R...
Run-of-De Mille
In 1949, after World War II had killed interest in the spectacle film for a time...
Feeling Bullish?
In 2003, legendary Wall Street financier Leon Levy announced that he was bullish...
Wiffle Ball
One day in 1953, an unemployed man named David Nelson Mullany cut holes in a har...
Platform Shoes?
In 1979, the Dead Kennedys' rebellious (punk rock) frontman Jello Biafra ran for...
Prius
Comedian and critic Bill Maher was once asked what kind of car he drove. "Well, ...
The Business of Dating
In 2003, Rachel Greenwald published a book (entitled "Find a Husband After 35 Us...
Dubya Dip Recession?
"[George Bush, Jr.'s] grandfather may have run a blue-blooded investment bank, B...
Young K.C. Irving
The New Brunswick industrialist K. C. Irving developed his business sense at an ...
Hastings?
One day in 1997, Reed Hastings returned a copy of Apollo 13 to his local ...
Dilbert
"[Scott Adams's] subversive message is that all business success (including his ...
Learning Curve
IBM chief Thomas Watson was once asked whether he planned to fire an employee wh...
Enron Audit
Enron's board of directors famously rode roughshod over its own accounting rules...
Pan Am Founder
"[Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe] had the big idea," Virgin Atlantic f...
Bloomberg: Welcome to Wall ...
"Bonds, and more particularly the curious subjectivity involved in pricing them,...
Trend Connections
Mick Jagger once received an unusual job offer from an Australian company called...
Corporate Transformation
When AOL CEO Steve Case orchestrated the merger of AOL and Time Warner (in 2001)...
Ozzy Osbourne: On the Wagon
In 1978, Ozzy Osbourne declared that he was an heroinic, announced his retiremen...
Das Irony
For much of his life Karl Marx was a slovenly obsessive who neglected his family...
Howard Hughes: Small Fortune
In 1938, Trans-World Airlines president Jack Frye, in desperate search of financ...
Realer Dealer
When John Jacob Astor sold a lot near Wall Street for $8,000, the proud buyer re...
General Suggestion
One day during the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon asked Israeli Prime Mini...
Dirt Merchant
"Hilaire Belloc failed to turn up when his friend G. K. Chesterton was received ...
Wallpaper
As chief of RCA, David Sarnoff had a strict policy on patents. Though company en...
Big Moron
"I'll tell you, it's big business," Donald Trump once declared. "If there is one...
Levittown
William Levitt was famed for his revolutionary application of assembly-line prod...
Nutty Shockley (long)
In February 1956, William Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in ...
Ford Stock
While contemplating an investment in his client's new company, Henry Ford's lawy...
Financial Crisis at MGM
"There were always financial crises," director Joseph L. Mankiewicz once recalle...
Young Estée Lauder
Estée Lauder started out selling skin creams concocted by her uncle, a chemist, ...
Dyslexic Success
In 2003, a British study (conducted by Tulip Financial Research) revealed that s...
Diefenbutcher
The political career of C. D. Howe, Liberal Canadian prime minister Mackenzie Ki...
Wilco: Money For Nothing
After Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was rejected by Warner Bros. (their f...
John Lennon: Imagine
"Imagine there's no heaven," The Financial Times invited readers in 2004....
Silvio Berlusconi: Organize...
"It was only a question of time before [Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi...
Firefighting Contract
"The U.S. Army confirmed it gave a lucrative firefighting contract in Iraq to th...
Four-Quadrant Movie
"After [Warner Bros production chief Alan Horn] took the helm at Warner in 1999,...
Oscar Campaign
Harvey Weinstein's Miramax scored 40 Oscar nominations in 2003, thanks in part t...
Idiot Amin
In 1971, a year after seizing power in a coup, Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin announced...
Steve Ballmer: Corporate Ch...
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (once rumored to listen to Dionne Warwick's "I Say a...
Jean-Marie Messier & the Go...
In his memoir j6m.com (2000), Vivendi Universal chairman Jean-Marie Messi...
Commando Investor
In April 2002, legendary investor Warren Buffett bought Fruit of the Loom for $8...
Classic Warren Buffett
Prior to Berkshire Hathaway's six-hour annual general meeting in May 2002, inves...
Gray Davis Ripoff
The state of California once awarded Larry Ellison's Oracle Corporation a $95 mi...
Blooming Mad?
"When I was at Harvard Business School in 1949, just after the war," Marvin Trau...
Rupert Murdoch: DirecBS
In May 2003, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch was called before a Senate comm...
Oracle & PeopleSoft
Oracle's attempted $7.3 billion hostile takeover of rival PeopleSoft in 2003 (da...
British Airways: Dirty Tricks
In January 1993, Virgin Atlantic chief Richard Branson won a libel suit against ...
Earth Station 5
"When an outfit called Earth Station 5 announced itself [in 2003] as a new peer-...
Tom Peters: Management Guru
In their bestselling book, In Search of Excellence, management gurus Tom ...
Britney Spears: Nyla
In June 2002, Britney Spears launched a new restaurant in Manhattan's swanky Dyl...
Haim Saban & the Lions
"[The billionaire Hollywood producer Haim Saban's] genius for business was appar...
Young Lew Wasserman
Legendary Universal Studios chief Lew Wasserman exhibited an entrepreneurial fla...
Michael Eisner: Finding Nemo
In his first 13 years in charge of Disney (beginning in 1984), Michael Eisner ra...
Michael Eisner: Camp
Warner Books chairman Larry Kirshbaum once suggested that Disney CEO Michael Eis...
Black Tuesday
One day at the height of the speculative stock market bubble in 1929, Joseph Ken...
Pierre Cardin: Brand Integrity
"If a licensee sells the product at a discount, or lowers its quality, or sells ...
Aimee Mann: What a Rip
Despite landing a major label recording contract, Aimee Mann began releasing her...
Conrad Black: Hollinger Sca...
Following the Hollinger scandal, Conrad Black's name became yet another byword f...
Armand Hammer: Occidental A...
"After taking the company public, Armand Hammer, the founder of Occidental Petro...
Maybe it's... Lash-Brow-Inc?
After observing his sister Mabel applying a mixture of petroleum jelly and coal ...
Plutos: Russian Business (l...
"When Aleksei Panteliushin turned up at Plutos, his sausage factory in northern ...
John Manley & the SEC
With American companies beset by scandal at the turn of the millennium, regulato...
Baby Ruth: Bogus, Baby
"Was the Baby Ruth candy bar named for baseball great Babe Ruth? Not according t...
Todd McFarlane: Spawning Bu...
Such was the speed of Spawn's success that, after publishing a few issues...
Estée Frauder?
"[Estée Lauder's] background was a study in selective self-improvement. By chang...
Mark Cuban: Young Hustler
Mark Cuban was a hustler from an early age. After paying his Indiana University ...
Personal Network Devices
At the turn of the millennium, Motorola banned the term "cell phone" as its hand...
Dean Kamen: Horse and Buggy
"When Dean Kamen, an American inventor, unveiled the ultra-secret Segway human t...
Bush Family Sleaze
"Imagine if word leaked that FDR's dad was knocking back sakes with Hirohito's i...
Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Yukos...
As the Russian state imploded in the early 1990s, many government assets were au...
Virgiliu Pop: Space Lawyer
On April 28, 2001, Virgiliu Pop - a space lawyer and extraterrestrial property r...
George W. Bush: Business of...
"You and I are in the same business," George W. Bush told Phil Derrow, CEO of th...
Letterman: Brilliant Move?
In 1993, "Late Night With David Letterman" moved from Peacock network NBC to the...
Ralph Lauren: Trademark Jac...
"Polo" founder Ralph Lauren once forced a magazine to change its name. The magaz...
Paul O'Neill: Genius Remark
How did Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill respond to the colla...
Cranberries Bounce
"Cranberries bounce. According to folklore, this discovery was made by John Webb...
U.S. Army & Civilian Contracts
In 2004, the U.S. Army Small Business Office hosted a conference at Caesar's Pal...
Alfred C. Fuller: Door-to-D...
While working as a door-to-door salesman early in his career, Fuller Brush Compa...
Vagit Alekperov: Price of L...
"[Lukoil CEO Vagit Alekperov] did well in high school and graduated from the Aze...
Steve Martin Autograph
His "wild and crazy guy" persona notwithstanding, Steve Martin was a thoughtful ...
David Everett: AdsOnFeet
After leaving Emerson College, David Everett founded AdsOnFeet, a Boston-based p...
Carroll Shelby: First Shelby
Shortly after racing legend Carroll Shelby brought the first Shelby from England...
Dennis Kozlowski: No Mercy
In September 2005, Dennis Kozlowski was sentenced to a grueling state-prison ter...
Wally "Famous" Amos: Cookie...
"Wally 'Famous' Amos, the cookie man, uses a small but very effective gift. His ...
Freddie Laker: Loophole
While running his small cargo-delivery business in the 1950s, Freddie Laker hatc...
Herb Kelleher: Losing Control
Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher: "A financial analyst once asked me if I wa...
Mark Birley: Rabbit Farm
"[Mark Birley's] mother, Rhoda, used to describe how he had shown signs of enter...
Panic Decision? (long)
BMW chief Bernd Pischetsrieder's penchant for planning was matched, perhaps, onl...
GM GM?
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Charles Wilson (President Eisenhower's futur...
Zwemmer
At 16, Paul Hamlyn applied to the bookseller Anton Zwemmer for a job. The interv...
Woolworth
Retailers have always had difficulty finding and retaining reliable employees. I...
Sunset Studios
"If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel," Sam Phill...
Amy Lowell: Stop the War
Amy Lowell was visiting London in 1914 when World War I broke out. Late for an a...
March on Washington?
Stephanie March, famed for her role on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," was ...
Son of Pete?
One wintry day in 1905, 11-year old Frank Epperson accidentally left a glass of ...
The Real Morgan? (long)
"With the recession that began in 1893, demand for farm goods waned and prices f...
Faux Pas de Deux
In 1935 the screenwriter Sam Hellman attended a gala party at the Beverly Hills ...
Warren Buffet Philosophy
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, the legendary exponent of "value investin...
Young Producer
Richard Attenborough first donned the producer's mantle when he staged a perform...
Sheryl Crow: Trouble at Wal...
Though such bands as Nirvana, White Zombie, and Public Enemy catered to Wal-Mart...
The Monkey?
In 1933, René "The Crocodile" Lacoste founded the Lacoste sportswear label - fam...
Pocket Change?
Perhaps surprisingly, J. P. Morgan disliked haggling and typically made quick of...
Bibliophile
After years in office, Robert Walpole looked forward to a relaxing retirement at...
Creative Artists Agency v. ...
In 2001, fuckingagent Patrick Whitesell left the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) f...
American Dream
Samuel Slater, born near Manchester in 1768, began working in a mill at the age ...
Business School Failure?
While studying business management at Yale University, Fred Smith nearly receive...
Pilkington
Glass-maker Allistair Pilkington was washing dishes one day when he observed a f...
eToys
Toby Lenk's antics were perfectly suited to a toy company executive. As CEO of e...
Bear Market?
In 1966, after the draft board had classified him 1-Y (on account of his flat fe...
Italian Politics
When Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister of Italy in 2001, he continued to r...
Ma Bell
MCI president William McGowan had little regard for his industry competitors. "I...
Unreliable Engineers?
"[IBM chief Thomas Watson Jr], who shared his father's volcanic temper... promot...
Chicken Soup for the Busine...
In the fall of 1991, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield began shopping around ...
Not so Smart?
In 1935, Esquire magazine publisher David Smart blocked efforts by Richar...
Messier Blooper
In 2000, Vivendi chief Jean-Marie Messier began negotiating with Edgar Bronfman ...
Jeffrey Who?
One evening during Herbert Allen's exclusive annual Sun Valley retreat for media...
Benetton & the Harajuku Bridge
"Every weekend, on a bridge near the train station in the Harajuku district, doz...
Haim Saban: Mighty Morphin ...
The idea for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers came to [Hollywood producer Hai...
The Mob in Cuba
In 1956, legendary Universal Studios boss Lew Wasserman visited Cuba with severa...
Google & Yahoo
In 1998, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo.com and ...
Wal-Mart: Sales Pitch
At a retail-industry convention one day, Wal-Mart chief Lee Scott was asked whet...
Marc Benioff: CLO
"Salesforce.com [a software company founded by Marc Benioff] inhabits an office ...
Corporate Anthropologist
"No one asks to see Steve Barnett's pith helmet anymore, which he views as a sig...
Bob Shaye: Pork and Beans
Lord of the Rings producer Bob Shaye once worked with his father, a wholesal...
Devil in the Details
"'If you cannot learn to live with Communists,' he [Norman Thomas] told his audi...
Load of Manure
Cornelius Vanderbilt was once visited by his son William seeking permission to b...
Velox
In the 1890s, Leo Baekeland synthesised Velox, a photographic paper which could ...
Frito Lay
In 1932, Texan entrepreneur Elmer Doolin began churning out corn chips (by hand)...
Oneida Corp.
"A chief tenet of John Humphrey Noyes's utopianism held that the
pleasures of s...
Burroughs Inc.
In 1923, Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs became the head of the Edgar Rice B...
Business Blockbuster
Among the business blockbusters published in 1996 was a book by high-flying Inte...
Inspired Copy
"Haslam Mills, chief reporter on the Manchester Guardian, went into adver...
William Wrigley: Double Tro...
In a bid to boost sales of his premium baking powder one year, William Wrigley b...
Telia
In April 2001, Telia (a Swedish Telecoms company) cut off Anders Igel's cell pho...
Stout Remark
Legendary London hostess Mrs. Ronald Greville, the daughter of Scottish beer bar...
eBull
During eBay's rapid rise, the company nurtured a quaint rumor about its origins,...
Edgar Bronfman, Jr & the Fa...
"I'm not going down in history as the one Bronfman who pissed away the family fo...
Music Business
In the 1970s, Volvo was the most successful corporation on the Stockholm stock e...
Wayne Newton: Finicky Judge
In November 1999, Wayne Newton judged a curious contest in Florida - "the only t...
Perseverance
"A 63-year-old man named Harlan had every excuse in the world to play the role o...
Blass
"Some years ago," Bill Blass once recalled, "at a meeting with other Seventh Ave...
Old Boys' Network
During the 1970s, though many British businesses fell apart in the wake of the O...
New Grass Revival
One day in 1996, Sam Bush (formerly of New Grass Revival) was asked what it felt...
Rockefeller
One day Standard Oil chief John D. Rockefeller learned that one of his senior ex...
Vanderbought
Cornelius Vanderbilt was once visited by one of his sons-in-law seeking a $50,00...
Cookie Cutter?
Having developed what many regard as the perfect cookie, Debbi Fields began to s...
The Business
One day in the mid-1980s, a group of music industry executives gathered in Los A...
AWOL-Time Warner?
AOL's Steve Case orchestrated the merger of AOL and Time Warner at the height of...
Kodak / Onomatopoeia
Kodak founder George Eastman was once asked about the origin of the name of his ...
Richard Kowalski
Richard Kowalski - an illiterate and indigent Jew whose wife, mother, and three ...
Fox News vs CNN
In 1996, Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch launched the Fox News network and introduced Rog...
Casa Noble Leader
"I can remember giving a talk to the MTV people at a management meeting in the K...
Don't Know Diddley
Among Nike's many memorable campaigns was a series of "You don't know Diddley" s...
French Godfather
AXA chairman Claude Bebear, often called the Godfather of French business, once ...
Logan's Cutbacks
AOL and Time Warner merged at the height of the tech bubble in 2001, just before...
John Galliano & Givenchy
In 1995, Bernard Arnault, chairman of L.V.M.H., appointed the famously flamboyan...
Redstone & Co.
After divocing his wife Phyllis in 2002, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone married...
Timothy Dexter: Coal to New...
The eccentric merchant Timothy Dexter (famed for publishing a twenty-four page p...
Sam Walton: Father Figure
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton encouraged a folksy, entrepreneurial spirit in which...
Shawn Fanning: Poetic Justice
"A big company is thinking of buying Napster and the 19-year-old kid who owns it...
Miuccia Prada: Business Mee...
"[Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of the global conglomerat...
Pub Tunes & Christmas Drinkers
In 2004, a group of enterprising pub managers conducted an experiment in order t...
Sonny Walkman?
One day in 1946, Akio Morita sat down with his business partner Masaru Ibuka in ...
Tech Support
Shortly after founding Free-PC, Bill Gross attended the "Demo 99" computer conve...
Waffle Iron
While operating a waffle iron in his kitchen one morning in 1962, Bill Bowerman ...
Lipton's Notes
"Sir Thomas Lipton told me the story of Lipton's Bulk Notes - almost the best pi...
Small Concession
Among the vendors at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 was an Englishman nam...
Oakleys
"What are Oakleys? Futuristic-looking, brightly hued 'performance' eyewear belov...
Jean-Marie Messier
With Jean-Marie Messier's merger of Vivendi (a French firm much like Proctor and...
Hard Bargain
Mr Selfridge told me that for years he had asked to buy a small shop that impede...
Rogers & Son
In February 1995, a 12-year-old boy was expelled from school and reprimanded for...
Narayanaswami
"Like many young writers, R.K. Narayan found it difficult at first to get his wo...
Fox President
In January 2000, Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog addressed rumors about ...
Price of Admission?
Vincent Price once lent his famous low-pitched, creaky, atmospheric voice to the...
Metropolitan Opera House
One day while perusing 5000 Nights at the Opera, Sir Rudolf Bing's brothe...
California Perfume Company
David McConnell was once a bookseller specializing in Shakespeare's works. Faced...
Radio Visionary
In the 1920s, David Sarnoff sought investment capital for the development of the...
Timely Meeting (long)
"In the fall of 2001, at an otherwise ordinary meeting of AOL Time Warner's boar...
Classic Gerstner
When Louis Gerstner assumed the helm of IBM in 1992, the firm was in serious tro...
Yahooligan
"At a political meeting at Wavertree, Randolph Churchill was haranguing his audi...
Beaverbrook Honeymoon
"The honeymoon showed Aitken [Lord Beaverbrook] at his characteristic best and w...
Ruthless Sarnoff
Famed for his pioneering role in the development of both radio and television, N...
Young Peter Kann
Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann, the son of a professor, once launched a community news...
Ed Breen Business Plan
In July 2002, Ed Breen joined beleaguered Tyco as the company's chairman and CEO...
American Pensions & the Per...
In September 2003, Steve Kandarian, chief of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corpor...
Esquire Magazine
In November 1932, Chicago publisher David Smart and editor Arnold Gingrich began...
Karmazin's T-Shirt
Seeking to reassure jittery investors, Viacom president Mel Karmazin once wore a...
Kelvin "Frenzy" MacKenzie &...
In 2002, former tabloid editor and radio executive Kelvin "The Frenzy" MacKenzie...
Pai in the Sky
"Among the many glowing books about Enron written before its fall was the best-s...
Shuji Nakamura: Rebellious ...
"Shuji Nakamura was just another rebellious inventor who had succeeded by trusti...
John Glaser: Compass Box Wh...
Shortly after quitting his job (as an international marketing director for Johnn...
James Joseph Minder: Bandit...
In January 2004, James Joseph Minder was elected chairman of Smith & Wesson (whi...
Kohler: Household Plumbing
In 1883 John Michael Kohler, the owner of a foundry in Wisconsin, realized that ...
Studio Politics
Universal Studios president Ron Meyer was once asked about rumors that Stacey Sn...
Donald Trump & Leslie Moonves
Following the success of his NBC reality series "The Apprentice," Donald Trump s...
Unlimited Ambition
Leslie Wexner became a retailing legend after building a $3 billion empire - whi...
20th Century Titan
In its special edition on "Builders and Titans of the 20th century," Time...
M&M
After Partition in 1947, Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), Pakistan's founder and...
Tint of Brilliance
One day in 1856, an English schoolboy named William Henry Perkin, inspired by a ...
HP Pricing
In 1938, Willian Hewlett and David Packard developed an audio oscillator which g...
Jack Ass
"The scandal [in 2002] at the 92nd Street Y Nursery School - an institution that...
Dot Bomb
To the great dismay of Time Warner employees, AOL's Steve Case orchestrated the ...
David Boggs & Grand Junction
"By 1990 Ethernet [the networking backbone for everything from corporate network...
Rotary Dial
"Rotary dials were patented in 1891 by Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in the U...
Wal-Mart Associates
Wal-Mart President and CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. was so frugal that on business trip...
Suroosh Alvi: VICE
Within a decade of its founding in 1994, VICE magazine (once dubbed "the ...
Levi's Jeans
"In 1850, 21-year old Levi Strauss traveled from New York to San Francisco. A pe...
Casual Shoes
One evening during his stint as sales manager of Wolverine Shoes (in 1957), Jim ...
Basic Business
In the 1980s, fuckingmodel Kathy Ireland decided to parlay her modeling career i...
Hobson's Choice
Customers hoping to rent one of Thomas Hobson's horses were taken into the stabl...
Ding Dong
In 1972, Chuck Berry's label recorded one of his concerts in London. Berry was l...
Wearing John Malkovich
In August 2002, John Malkovich announced plans to launch a line of clothing in c...
Prospectus
"Samuel Goldwyn made his first dent in the wall of prejudice against the movies ...
Amazon.com Shareholder Meeting
In 2003, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (who once crawled on all fours atop a con...
Star Wars Preview
"I got a chance to see a preview of Star Wars," Viacom chairman Sumner Re...
Good Catholic?
The Bishop of Calgary once expressed sympathy for strikers at a Canadian newspap...
Wily Balanchine
"[George Balanchine] had all the pedigree of Russian ballet but a really forward...
Olsen Twins, Inc
When Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's first TV movie trounced "60 Minutes" in the ra...
Jim Clark: Phenomenal Modesty
"I think that what Larry Ellison and Bill Gates have is phenomenal wealth," Nets...
Marc Benioff: JRK?
"The IPO of Salesforce.com, a pioneer in the $7 billion market for so-called cus...
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