Before there was Amazon, there was Sears, Roebuck, using the mail-order catalog where the Internet is used today. Before Walmart was the world’s largest retailer (and company of any type), there was Sears, Roebuck, in its glory days by far the largest retailer on...
It’s December 1875. Thirty-one-year-old Henry John “HJ” Heinz is bedridden the entire month with deep depression. On some days, he cannot even get out of bed. His world has collapsed around him. For the last six years, he and his friends and financial backers, the...
These days the news and chatter on the Internet are filled with stories of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. In this environment, it can be easy to forget or take for granted the other great enterprises that make the world go ’round. On August 28, 1907,...
There are stories that take tragedy to unearth. When the world bears witness to great ability, new awareness changes the narrative of today and rewrites the influence of the past. Walter Beech, stunt pilot and renowned engineer, built the Beech Aircraft Company into...
Conrad Nicholson Hilton was born to wealth. His father, “Colonel” A. H. “Gus” Hilton, was the leading merchant and trader in the tiny sun-baked mining village of San Antonio, New Mexico. Young Connie wanted to become a banker, and at age thirty-one he went to Texas to...