Daniel McCallum was good at a lot of things. He was a good carpenter and an engineer who invented a truss used in wooden railroad bridges. We’re not sure how he learned all this because there’s very little on the record about him from when he dropped out of school at about the fifth grade until he turned up as » Read More
Category: History
The Peshtigo Principle
Quick, what was the most devastating fire in American history? If you answered the Great Chicago Fire that started on August 8, 1871, you’re wrong. While that fire was burning, an even more awful fire was raging 250 miles to the north, around Peshtigo, Wisconsin. I say “around” Peshtigo, because » Read More
The Story of Norio Ohga
If it weren’t for a bout of pleurisy, there might have been no Walkman and the business world might have missed the person most like Steve Jobs. Norio Ohga was born in 1930, the middle child of seven. World War II was raging as he turned thirteen and he would have been assigned to work in a munitions factory » Read More
The Fred Harvey Lessons
Fred Harvey didn’t know anything about restaurants when he came to the US from Liverpool, England in the mid-nineteenth century. When he died in 1901, there were 47 Harvey House restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars under the Harvey name. His Fred Harvey restaurant brand was the best-known brand in » Read More
The Banker, the Earthquake, and Finding Opportunity in Adversity
At about 5 AM on April 18, 1906, the world in and around San Francisco began to shake. On the sixth floor of the Palace hotel, Enrico Caruso was awakened by the shaking. From his window, he saw “the buildings toppling over, big pieces of masonry falling.” He heard cries and screams from the street below. The » Read More