Business Birthdays and Anniversaries in October

BIRTHDAYS

• Oct 1, 1881 -  William E. Boeing: Commercial aviation pioneer, founder of Boeing Company

• Oct 5, 1902 -  Raymond A. Kroc: Expanded McDonald’s hamburger chain nationwide and pioneered concept of fast food

• Oct 6, 1846 -  George Westinghouse: Engineer and inventor of the air brake for trains; First employer to give his employees paid vacations.

• Oct 7, 1856 -  Edward D. Jones: Co-founder of Dow Jones & Company in 1897, publisher of the Wall Street Journal and creator of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

• Oct 8, 1890 -  Edward V. Rickenbacker: Auto racer, war hero and Eastern Airlines chief.

• Oct 9, 1873 -  Charles Rudolph Walgreen: The father of the modern drugstore, he was a pharmacist who manufactured some of his drugs in order to be able to maintain profitable low prices. He also offered Walgreens branded merchandise and introduced the lunch counter and soda fountain.

• Oct 11, 1844 -  Henry J. Heinz: Founder of H.J. Heinz Company, the largest producer of ketchup, mustard, pickles and vinegar

• Oct 11, 1906 -  Charles Revson: Founder and colorful force behind Revlon Cosmetics

• Oct 12, 1923 -  Jean Nidetch: Founder of Weight Watchers. What began as a small support group meeting in her New York apartment in 1963 turned into a phenomenally successful international business.

• Oct 14, 1905 -  Eugene Fodor: Travel writer, first travel book published in 1936, after which he published more than 140, bringing to them a human element previously lacking in travel books.

• Oct 15, 1924  - Lido (Lee) A. Iacocca: Engineered a federal loan for Chrysler Corporation saving it from bankruptcy, arguing that the unemployment compensation resulting from the bankruptcy would cost more than the loan. One year later, the company reported a profit. He also brought the convertible back into fashion and introduced the minivan.

• Oct 16, 1758 -  Noah Webster: Teacher and journalist who compiled the earliest American dictionary of the English language.

• Oct 19, 1855 -  Charles E. Merrill: Founder of Merrill Lynch and creator of the main street brokerage firm

• Oct 21, 1833 -  Alfred Bernhard Nobel: Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite. His will established the Nobel Prize.

• Oct 21, 1891 -  Leo Burnett: Advertising executive famous for creating the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Marlboro Man

• Oct 23, 1752 -  Nicolas Appert: Chef, chemist, confectioner, inventor and author. Invented bouillon tablet. Devised a system of heating foods and sealing them in an airtight container. Dubbed "father of canning"

• Oct 28, 1955 -  William H. Gates III: Developed operating system for IBM PC in 1980. Revolutionized PC operating systems with introduction of Windows. His company, Microsoft, is the world’s #1 software company.

• Oct 30, 1893 -  Charles Atlas: Ex 97-lb weakling who created a popular mail-order body-building course

• Oct 30, 1872 -  Emily Post: Etiquette expert. Her Blue Book of Social Usage became an instant success 

ANNIVERSARIES IN OCTOBER

• 1 - 1908: Ford introduces the Model T, “a car for the great multitude."  His perfection of the assembly line revolutionizes the industry. The car is priced at just under $1000. Black is the only color offered because black paint dries the fastest. Ford sells 10,000 cars in the first year of production. Four years later, the Model T accounts for three out of every four cars sold in the U.S. By 1927, manufacturing efficiencies have reduced the selling price to under $300. Ford can still pay assembly-line workers $5.00 per day when the prevailing daily wage is $2.35. He has the notion that his workers are potential consumers, and they prove him right by buying their own Model Ts.

• 1 - 1947: Levittown opens on Long Island, New York. It is a planned community that capitalizes on the housing crunch of the postwar years. The houses are constructed quickly, using pre-assembled sections added to concrete slabs in an assembly-line routine. It offers affordable housing to returning GIs and their families, in the form of small, detached, single-family houses equidistant from New York City and the defense industrial plants on Long Island. It will eventually grow to more than 17,000 homes.

• 1 - 1975: HBO begins broadcasting via satellite, it showed the “Thrilla in Manila” heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, spurring the growth of the cable TV industry and accelerating the fragmentation of the marketplace.

• 4 - 1957: The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to successfully orbit the Earth. The event sends shockwaves around the world and catches the U.S. by surprise. Sputnik is only two feet in diameter and weighs only 184-pounds, but it makes the United States realize the Soviets are technologically superior. It spawns the massive U.S. effort that will result in Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon in 1969.

• 7 - 1896: Dow-Jones Industrial Average is reported in the Wall Street Journal. Journal Editor and Dow Jones & Company founder Charles Dow has devised a way to gauge the performance of the industrial component of America’s stock markets based on the weighted average of twelve key stocks, including the major railroads and Western Union.

• 8 - 1636: Harvard University, the oldest university in the US, is founded when the Massachusetts General Court votes to provide 400 pounds sterling for the college. Today, the Harvard Graduate School of Business is often referred to as the “West Point of Capitalism.”

• 8-10 - 1871: The Great Chicago Fire levels three-and-a-half square miles of the city, destroys 17,450 buildings, leaving 98,500 people homeless and 250 dead. The financial loss totals $200 million.

• 11 - 1887: Dorr Eugene Felt receives a patent for the Comptometer, the first accurate adding machine, complete with a keyboard. He calls it the “macaroni box model” because the original prototype had been made from a wooden macaroni box, as well as meat skewers, staples and a rubber band. The commercial Comptometer weighs 17-25 pounds and sells for $300 to $400. It will be on the market for 40 years.

• 12 - 1896: The first newspaper comic strip appears in American Humorist, the weekly supplement to the New York Journal. “The Yellow Kid Takes a Hand at Golf” by Richard Fenton Outcault is the first narrative told in cartoons over several panels.

• 15 - 1783: First manned flight takes place. It is in a hot air balloon piloted by Francis Pilatre De Rozier. The balloon, tethered to the ground by a cable, reaches a height of 28 meters. On November 21, De Rozier makes the first free flight in history.

• 15 - 1878: Edison Electric is founded by Thomas Edison. In addition to inventing the light bulb, Edison will invent and perfect the parallel circuit, devices for maintaining constant voltage, safety fuses, insulating materials, light sockets and on-off switches—elements that will make electric light an economical alternative to the gas light of the day. A year later, he demonstrates the first incandescent lamp that can be used economically. The first prototype can burn for 13 ½ hours.

• 15 - 1978: In the California asbestos lawsuits, a judge rules there had been “a conscious effort by the asbestos industry in the 1930s to downplay or arguably suppress, the dissemination of information to employees and the public for fear of the promotion of lawsuits.”

• 15 - 1981: Harley Davidson adopts Japanese management techniques. Company Chairman Vaughn L. Beals Jr. and his management team, having just purchased the ailing motorcycle manufacturer in a leveraged buyout, realize that to beat their highly successful Japanese rivals, they need to adopt techniques such as “just in time” inventory control. With Harley’s successful turnaround, other U.S. manufacturers follow suit.

• 16 - 1868: America’s first Department store, Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution, (ZCMI) opens in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sales total over $1.25 million the first year. It is still in operation today.

• 19 - 1987: The Black Monday stock market crash. The Dow-Jones reports the biggest drop in its history, 508 points or 22.6%. In its wake, markets around the world are put on restricted trading, giving the Federal Reserve and other central banks time to pump liquidity into the system to prevent a further downdraft. Debate on the cause of the crash still continues.

• 24 - 1929: The stock market crash and panic marks the end of the Roaring 20’s and the start of the Great Depression. The crash begins on Black Thursday, October 24th with a record 12.9 million shares traded. It continues on Black Monday the 28th with a record one-day loss of around 13%. It culminates on Black Tuesday the 29th with a new record of 16.4 million shares traded and a market loss of 12%. The market will continue to fall, hitting 41.22 in July of 1932, a drop of 89% from its pre-crash level of 381.17. The market will not recover until 1954.

• 26 - 1825: The Erie Canal opens. The 363-mile canal from Buffalo to New York City sparks a tremendous increase in trade, allows the first great westward movement of settlers, and turns New York City into the most prominent commercial center in the U.S.

• 29 - 1969: The first Internet connection is created. ARPANET, developed by the Department of Defense, connects UCLA, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. By the end of 1970, there are 10 sites, with email and file transfer utilities to follow. The @ symbol is adopted in 1972 and a year later, 75% of the traffic is email. ARPANET is decommissioned in 1990 and the National Science Foundation becomes the backbone of the Internet.

• 30 - 1957: The first Japanese car, a Toyota Crown Model RS-L, is sold in the U.S. The original models are not well accepted. It will take the oil embargoes of the 1970s to pave the way for the success of the smaller, fuel-efficient cars. In 1980, Japan will surpass the U.S. in auto production. By 1990, Toyota will be the world’s largest car maker.

• 31 - 1921: The first recorded instance of a Halloween celebration takes place in Anoka, Minn. Halloween has since become a bonus for retailers, generating $7 billion in sales for decorations, costumes and candy, and trailing only Christmas in consumer spending. An estimated 85% of U.S. households participate in handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, spending about $2 billion in the process. The top five Halloween brands are Snickers, Reese's, Kit-Kat, Milky Way, and M&M's.

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