Business Birthdays and Anniversaries in May

BIRTHDAYS

• May 6, 1870 -  Amadeo Peter (A.P.) Giannini: Founder of Bank of America. He started as the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904. In the wake of the 1906 earthquake, he extended credit to small businesses. He also pioneered home mortgages, auto loans and installment credit. He set up the first branch banking system in California.

• May 9, 1883 -  Henry J. Kaiser: Built a construction company that handled major projects such as Hoover Dam. Founded a major aluminum company, created an employee health plan and established 19 hospitals, constituting the first HMO in the US

• May 11, 1899 -  Walter Haas, Sr.: As chairman of Levi Strauss, he was credited with saving the struggling company. He graduated with a B.S. from the U.C. Berkeley School of Business in 1910. In 1989, the school was renamed the Haas School of Business in his honor.

• May 12, 1908 -  Mary Kay Ash: Frustrated at being passed over for promotion at a direct sales company, she created Mary Kay Cosmetics, run by and for women. Its success was built on a direct sales force and motivational techniques such as the famous pink Cadillac given to top sales people.

• May 18, 1918 -  Charles D. Tandy: Best know for his acquisition of an ailing Radio Shack and the turnaround that built it into the nation’s largest electronics retailer.

• May 16, 1804 -  Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: First woman publisher in Boston, possibly in the U.S.

• May 20, 1913 - William R. Hewlett: Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, the first Silicon Valley technology company

• May 21, 1878 -  Glenn Hammond Curtiss: Inventor and aviation pioneer. In July 1908, he piloted the first official public flight in the U.S., flying one mile. Established America's first aircraft manufacturing company

• May 21, 1898 -  Armand Hammer: He expanded Occidental Petroleum into one of the “big oil” companies, championed trade with the Soviet Union and was an avid collector of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art.

• May 23, 1857 -  Alfred P. Sloan: Long time chairman of General Motors, credited with introducing yearly model changes and planned obsolescence

• May 23, 1934 -  Robert Moog: Inventor of the first commercially viable keyboard synthesizer

• Mar 24, 1855 -  Andrew W. Mellon: He turned a small private bank into one of the largest sources of venture capital in U.S. history, helping to fund the steel and oil industries.

• May 24, 1895 -  Samuel I. Newhouse: Multimillionaire businessman who built family publishing and communications empire.

• May 25, 1886 -  Philip Murray: Labor leader and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Also leader of United Mine Workers

• May 25, 1889 - Igor Sikorsky: Aeronautical engineer best remembered for development of the first successful helicopter in 1939.

• May 30, 1885 -  Arthur E. Andersen: He built a small accounting firm into one of the largest accounting and financial consulting enterprises in the world. For more than 80 years, his firm had a reputation for integrity. However, in the 1990s and early 2000s, its later questionable work for energy firm Enron led to Andersen’s demise along with Enron's collapse. 

ANNIVERSARIES IN MAY

• 1 - 1914: Thomas Watson becomes president of Computing-Tabulating Recording Company, later to be known as IBM.

• 1 - 1981: American Airlines introduces the first frequent flyer program. Its AAdvantage travel awards program rewards frequent flyers with free and discounted travel. It is a revolutionary concept that becomes widely adopted throughout the industry.

• 3 - 1971: National Public Radio begins broadcasting. The nation’s first non-commercial radio network starts with 30 employees and 90 charter stations. Today NPR programming is heard on more than 750 independent radio stations.

• 6 - 1893: Stock market crash, the second-worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Within a year, 600 banks, 74 railroads and 15,000 commercial businesses collapse.

• 8 - 1886: Coca-Cola is invented in Atlanta. Dr. John S. Pemberton develops a beverage based on the kola nut and coca leaves. Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, writes the name in the flowing script that is still used today.

• 9 - 1961: FCC Chairman Newton Minow gives “vast wasteland” speech to network TV executives. He invites each of them to sit through a day’s programming, describing it as full of senseless violence, mindless comedy and offensive advertising.

• 10 - 1923: Alfred Sloan becomes president of General Motors. He builds GM into the world’s largest automaker by adopting new approaches to advertising and marketing. He introduces the yearly model change in 1927 and develops divisions, such as Buick and Cadillac, that differentiate cars by status, price and luxury. He also sets up the nation’s first consumer credit agency.

• 15 - 1911: The Supreme Court orders the breakup of Standard Oil of New Jersey. In one of the most famous anti-trust cases to come before it, the Supreme Court orders the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust into separate geographical units.

• 15 - 1930: Ellen Church becomes the first flight attendant. Boeing Air Transport (BAT), the predecessor of United Airlines, hires Church, a registered nurse from Iowa, to help combat the public’s fear of flying. The first flight is from Oakland to Chicago, taking 20 hours and making 13 stops.

• 15 - 1940: Nylon stockings go on sale at stores throughout the country. Far less expensive than silk stockings, they become immensely popular.

• 16 - 1960: Theodore Maiman creates the first working laser using a cylinder made of ruby. The name laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Today lasers are used in thousands of industrial, surgical and everyday applications, including laser printers and compact disc players.

• 17 - 1954: Brown versus the Board of Education outlaws segregation in U.S. schools. Chief Justice Earl Warren reads the unanimous Supreme Court decision, including the famous statement, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

• 18 - 1991: Gertrude Belle Elion is the first woman inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Her scientific career spans the 1940s through the 1980s. Her research accomplishments include six different drugs used to combat serious medical conditions, including leukemia, organ transplants and AIDS. She was also awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988 for her discovery of important principles for drug treatment.

• 20-21 -  1927: Charles Lindbergh completes first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

• 23 - 1895: New York Public Library is created. Former New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden leaves over $2 million in his estate to “establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York.”

• 24 - 1844: First U.S. telegraph line opened by Samuel Morse. The forty-mile line of wire between Baltimore and Washington carries the first message, “What God hath wrought.”

• 24 - 1881: The Brooklyn Bridge opens, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan. A major feat of engineering, it costs $15.1 million to build, more than twice the original estimate of $7 million. On the first day, the bridge carries trolley lines and horse-drawn vehicles.

• 27 - 1930: Cellophane tape patented by Richard G. Drew, an engineer for 3M. The invention is manufactured by 3M as Scotch Tape. Drew had also invented masking tape. The first tape dispenser with a built-in cutting edge is invented in 1932 by another 3M engineer, John A. Borden.

• 31 - 1790: First copyright law signed by President George Washington. The first law to protect books, maps and other original materials, it grants rights to U.S. citizens only. Rights were extended to non-citizens in 1891. Noah Webster, the publisher of the first dictionary of American English, is instrumental in getting it passed.

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