Business Birthdays and Anniversaries in July

BIRTHDAYS

• July 1, 1906 -  Estee Lauder: Cosmetics queen who started her business at her kitchen table in 1946. Estee Lauder Companies has become one of the largest, most successful cosmetics empires.

• July 2, 1904 -  Rene Lacoste: French tennis champion known as The Crocodile. Designed the first shirt specifically for tennis, a loose-fitting cotton polo shirt that soon became the standard. He adorned the Lacoste shirt with a small crocodile, the first apparel logo.

• July 5, 1853 -  Cecil John Rhodes: English born South African millionaire politician. Said to have controlled 90 percent of the world's diamond production at one time. His will founded the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University for superior scholastic achievers. Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was named for him.

• July 8, 1839 -  John D. Rockefeller Sr.: Founder of Standard Oil, he built it into the largest company in the world and for a time was the richest man in the world

• July 9, 1819 -  Elias Howe: Inventor of the sewing machine

• July 11, 1927 - Theodore Maiman: Physicist who developed the first working laser

• July 12, 1895 -  Buckminster Fuller: Architect, inventor, engineer, philosopher; his geodesic dome is one of his most recognizable works.

• July 12, 1854 -  George Eastman: Invented film and the inexpensive camera. Founder of Eastman Kodak and creator of photography industry

• July 13, 1944 -  Erno Rubik: Inventor of the Rubik's Cube, was born in Budapest, Hungary in a hospital air raid shelter

• July 14, 1906 -  Tom Carvel: He invented the machine that makes soft-serve ice cream. His ice cream stores began with a $15 loan and grew into the third largest ice cream chain in America.

• July 19, 1865 -  Charles Horace Mayo: Surgeon, one of the Mayo brothers, establishers of the Mayo Foundation and Mayo Clinic.

• July 19, 1953 -  Howard Schultz: Chairman and chief global strategist of Starbucks

• July 30, 1863 -  Henry Ford: Industrialist whose assembly-line method of automobile production revolutionized the industry.

ANNIVERSARIES IN JULY

• 1 - 1847: The US Postal Service issues the first postage stamps as part of a governmental act to simplify postal rates. The act states that letters can be mailed up to 300 miles for five cents per half ounce, and 10 cents for distances over 300 miles. Benjamin Franklin is pictured on the five-cent stamp; George Washington, on the ten-cent stamp.

• 1 - 1963: US Postal Service introduces the 5-digit zip code. Based on a realignment of the postal transportation system set up around the country’s major metro areas, the Zoning Improvement Plan (ZIP) assigns each address in the country a 5-digit code. The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for the far West. This was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small post offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.

• 1 - 1970: Xerox founds its Palo Alto Research Center. PARC will commercialize technologies such as laser printing, Ethernet, the graphical user interface (GUI) and ubiquitous computing.

• 1 - 1979: Sony introduces the Walkman, created at the insistence of Sony Chairman Akio Morita. Morita overcame internal resistance to the idea of a tape player that could not record, and the Japanese association of headphones with deafness. He promised to create a headphone culture around the world. He marketed “music anytime, anywhere” to young and active people, and changed the way the world listens to music.

• 2 - 1962: The First Wal-Mart opens in Rogers, Arkansas. It is 16,000 square feet and sells everything from clothing to auto supplies at a discount. The store is an immediate success. Wal-Mart will go on to open hundreds of stores, change the way America shops, and become the nation’s largest retailer.

• 3 - 1886: The Linotype machine is invented by Otto Mergenthaler. It allows type to be set mechanically rather than by hand and is the greatest advance in printing since the invention of movable type 400 years earlier.

• 6 - 1919: First airship crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Major George Herbert Scott pilots the zeppelin HMA Beardmore from Britain to New York in the first west-to-east crossing of the north Atlantic.

• 10 - 1985: Aldus Corporation introduces PageMaker 1.0 for the Apple Macintosh, beginning the era of desktop publishing. The software developed by Paul Brainard allows the creation of brochures, advertisements and other sophisticated materials for printing from desktop computers, helping fuel Macintosh sales. PageMaker for the IBM PC follows in December 1986.

• 13 - 1907: The first synthetic plastic, Bakelite, is invented by Leo Beakeland. The new material is still in use for thousands of products, including cars, household appliances, radios and telephones.

• 17 - 1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, CA. Ten thousand invitations had been mailed; 28,000 people showed up, many with counterfeit tickets. The temperature hit 110 degrees. A plumbers’ strike meant few water fountains. The freshly-laid asphalt pulled off high-heeled shoes. Rides broke down because of the heat and crowds. Stands ran out of food and drink. The press gave the park unfavorable reviews. But the public loved it. Disneyland welcomed 1 million visitors within 7 weeks.

• 25 - 1909: World’s first international overseas airplane flight. French aviator Louis Blériot flies a 24-horsepower monoplane from Calais, France to Dover, England, crossing the English Channel in 37 minutes.

• 26 - 1990: President George H. W. Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act, guaranteeing equal opportunity for people with disabilities in public accommodations, commercial facilities, employment, transportation, state and local government services and telecommunications. The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of people with disabilities at 51.2 million. They represent 18% of the population. The number with severe disabilities is 32.5 million, or 12% of the population.

• 28 - 1933: First singing telegram. Western Union operator Lucille Lipps sings Happy Birthday to star vocalist Rudy Vallee on July 28. The idea is the brainchild of Western Union director of public relations George P. Olin, who wanted to convince people that messages could be fun. Telegrams were often associated with bad news because they were used during World War I to report servicemen’s deaths. Other Western Union executives tell Olin he will make the company a laughingstock. But when newspaper columnist Walter Winchell writes a story about the singing telegram, it starts a new (and profitable) craze.

• 30 - 1935: Penguin publishes the first paperback books in London. The ten titles are designed to fill a need for inexpensive editions of good quality contemporary writing. The company sells 3 million books within the first two years.

• 29 - 1958: Eisenhower signs act creating NASA. Formed as a result of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, NASA inherits the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and almost immediately begins working on  human space flight. NASA’s first high profile program is Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space, followed by Project Gemini, which uses spacecraft built for two astronauts. NASA’s human space flight efforts culminate in 1969 when the Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

• 31 - 1948: New York’s International Airport is dedicated. It is commonly known as Idlewild airport because it was built on part of the Idlewild Golf Course. The airport’s IATA code is IDL. In December 1963, it is renamed JFK International Airport and the IATA code is changed to JFK.

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