Douglas Aircraft Company

The Douglas Aircraft Company was established in 1921 by American aircraft designer Donald Douglas as a successor to a company he had cofounded in previous year. He designed the Cloudster in 1920, the first aerodynamically streamlined plane, and before established his own company to fill an order for three of the planes for the U.S. Navy.

The Douglas Aircraft Company was located in Long Beach California. During the early 1930s, Douglas began to look at the commercial airline market. In 1939, Douglas aircraft flew 90% of the world’s commercial airline traffic.

Douglas planes, particularly the DC-3 and its military counterpart, the C-47, both built at the Long Beach plant, dominated the skies for several years. At its height in wartime, the Long Beach plant employed 43,000 workers.

In 1954, Douglas was delivering aircraft to nearly half the world’s airlines. When Boeing’s jet-powered Dash 80 airplane rolled out that year, Douglas continued the DC-8 study with customer input. On May 30, 1958 Douglas Aircraft joined the commercial jet age, as the DC-8 jetliner made its first flight.

In 1967 McDonnell Douglas was formed by a merger of two separate companies, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and Douglas Aircraft Company.

The merged company continued to manufacturer commercial aircraft, combat aircraft and space vehicles. A further merger of McDonnel Douglas with Boeing Commercial Airplanes, took place in 1997 ending the 76 years of Douglas Aircraft Company.
Douglas Aircraft Company

Brief history of 7Up

In the village of Price's Branch, Missouri, a Mr Charles Leiper Grigg invented a popular orange drink in 1920 called Howdy. He launched his company as The Howdy Corporation. In order to improve it he marketed another drink in 1929 under the name of “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” it was originally formulated with lithium citrate as one of its active ingredients.

The beverage was a caramel-colored, lithiated lemon-lime soda, which he placed as a drink with a "flavor wallop" to market alongside Howdy Orange drink. The sales were bad. At the same time, more than 600 lemon-lime soft drinks were already in the marketplace.

Grigg spent more than two years testing eleven different formulas of lemon-flavored drinks. He settled on one that fulfilled his criteria, being both refreshing and thirst quenching - the drink recognized today as 7UP.

Acknowledging the success of the 7UP trademark, in 1936, C. L. Grigg changed the Corporation’s name from The Howdy Corporation to The Seven-Up Company. By the late 1940s, 7UP had become the third best-selling soft drink in the world.

The company was took over by Westinghouse in 1969 and in June 1978, Philip Morris acquired The Seven Up Company. In early 1987, Cherry 7UP and Diet 7UP were introduced. The target market was young people and it was instant success across the country.

In 1986, investment firm Hicks and Hass bought The Seven Up Company before the latter merged with Dr Pepper in 1988. The Dr Pepper Snapple Group was spun off from Cadbury Schweppes in 2008; it merged with Keurig Green Mountain in 2018 to form Keurig Dr Pepper. Now the rights to the brand of 7UP are held by Keurig Dr Pepper.
Brief history of 7Up

History of almond nut in United States

Explorers ate almonds while traveling the "Silk Road" between Asia and the Mediterranean. Before long, almond trees flourished in the Mediterranean, especially in Spain and Italy. Americans imported almonds in colonial times, but they did not become an important confections in the United States until almond groves in California began to produce large quantities  in the early twentieth century.

Almonds were brought to the United States with the early colonist but were only successful in California, where they thrived in the Central Valley’s Mediterranean climate of mild, wet winters and dry.

People may have eaten home-harvested almonds, but none of these nuts entered trade, either for domestic consumption or export. New England and the Mid-Atlantic states attempted to plant the first commercial orchards in the United States in 1840s. The US Patent Office assisted these efforts by giving free seeds to any American interested in the program.

In the early 1850s, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Monterey launched the first successful commercial venture.

Candied almonds (Jordan almond) and other confections that frequently contained almonds, such as English toffee and Turkish Delight, were sold in the United States in the nineteenth century, but it wasn’t until Milton Hershey decided to add almonds to his Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar in 1908 that almonds became an important food in America.

In 1853 almonds were displayed at a fair in San Francisco and by 1856 trees grown in California nurseries were available.

Many other candy makers later followed Hershey lead. These included the Bit-O-Honey bar (1924), the Heath Bar (1928) and Almond Joy, first marketed in 1948.

The Hershey Company released the Golden Almond chocolate bar in 1976 and the Symphony milk chocolate bar with almonds and toffee chips in 1989.

Today American almond production is centered in California’s Central Valley, which supplies more than 70 percent of all commercial almonds consumed in the world.
History of almond nut in United States

Biography of Will Keith Kellogg

Will Keith Kellogg was business manager of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, founder of the Kellogg Company and founder of the W.K Kellogg foundation.

Born on April 7, 1860 to John Preston Kellogg and Ann Janette Stanley Kellogg, he was christened ‘Willie Keith Kellogg’ but he detested his first name, and legally changed it to ‘Will’ in 1898.

Will Kellogg received little formal education, becoming an apprentice broom maker at age 11, and at the age of fourteen Will began working as a salesman for his father’s broom business. He used a horse and buggy to travel from town to town, For longer sale trips Will sometimes took a train.

In April 1880, Will was hired by his brother John Kellogg as his assistant at Battle Creek Sanitarium. In the late 1880s, the brothers established the Sanitas Food Company to market their culinary innovations.

After many experiments, in 1894 Kellogg brothers perfected the process for flaking grains.  It was first served to the patients as the Sanitarium and later sold by the Sanitas Food Company.

In 1906, Will struck off on his own to form the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Eventually the renamed Kellogg Company became the world’s largest purveyor of ready-to-eat breakfast cereal.

Kellogg grew his business by masterful and audacious advertising and creative promotions. One campaigns urged housewives to wink at their grocer; those brave enough to do so received a free sample of Toasted Corn Flakes.

The company grew to be the largest manufacturer of ready-to-eat cereals in the world. Will Keith Kellogg passed away on October 6, 1951.
Biography of Will Keith Kellogg

Biography of William George Fargo (May 20, 1818 – August 3, 1881)

Fargo was a native of Pompey New York, having been born there in May 20, 1818 the first of a family of twelve children. He was the oldest.

He tried many jobs and successively as postman, grocer, freight agent on the new Auburn and Syracuse Railroad. In 1842 he became a messenger for Pomeroy and Company, the express firm between Albany and Buffalo and in the next year was named their agent in Buffalo.

In 1844 he became an agent for Wells and Company, becoming one of the three owners of the firm. He managed all express operations west of Buffalo, New York.

Wells and Fargo formed American Express in 1850. During that time, many Americans had gone west in search of gold. Wells and Fargo realized that they could make a lot of money by offering banking services to these people.

In March 1852, Wells and Fargo organized a company to deliver mails, packages and paper from the East to San Francisco. From there the shipments would distribute to California mining camps.

The business became so successful that Wells Fargo also entered banking, dropping off packages at mining camps, purchasing gold dust for $15 an ounce, and later selling it to the US mint for $18.

In 1861 William Fargo was elected Mayor of Buffalo on the Democratic ticket.
Biography of William George Fargo (May 20, 1818 – August 3, 1881)

1st commercial bottled carbonated water in United States

Carbonated waters were imported into the USA from the UK prior to 1800. In 1807, Henry Thompson of Tottenham, Middlesex, was granted a British patent for impregnating water with gas.

The first commercial production is attributed to Benjamin Silliman, who was professor of chemistry at Yale College.

Benjamin Silliman had seen carbonated waters in his travels to England and had met Joseph Priestly who had emigrated to the USA.

In partnership with Mr Twinning, he started bottling and selling carbonated water under pressure locally in New Haven, Connecticut in 1807.

In 1809, they purchased costly soda-making equipotent and opened two retail soda-water outlets one at the City Hotel and the other at the Tontine Coffee House.

Silliman manufactured his carbolated water in the cellar, from where iron tubes led upstairs to a decorated manual pump from which customers could be served.

Within a fairly short time, soda water became a popular beverage. Cold soda water was sold everywhere and was in inexpensive enough for most people to joy.

In the late 19th century a druggist invented a flavored soda by adding an extract from the African kola nut. Coca-cola was invented in 1886 by a pharmacist, John Pemberton.
1st commercial bottled carbonated water in United States

Clarence W. Barron of Dow Jones & Company (1855 - 1928)

Barron was born July 2, 1855, in Boston, and his father was a teamster. He graduated from Boston’s Prescott Grammar English School and Graduate English High School in 1873 and went to work for the Boston Daily News and then the Evening Transcript.

From 1878 to 1887, he was a reporter covering many beats but then began gravitating toward financial reporting.

In 1887, he founded the Boston News Bureau and in 1897 the Philadelphia News Bureau providing financial news to brokers.

In March 1903, after founder Charles Dow Jones died, Barron purchased control of Dow Jones & Company for $130,000.  The Wall Street Journal is the flagship of the company.

At that time the paper’s circulation had already reached 7000; by the end of 1920 it reached 18,750. In 1912, he assumed the title of president and set out to expand the circulation of the newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. Barron introduced new printing equipment, and the news gathering side of the company expanded.

Dow Jones & Company survived and thrived by editorial and technological innovation, enabling it to collect revenue from a variety of customers and advertisers.

Dow Jones remained an influential and prosperous entity during the early years of the twenty-first century. Dow Jones & Company remained in the family until 2007 when Down Jones was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Barron is widely considered the father of American financial journalism.
Clarence W. Barron of Dow Jones & Company (1855 - 1928)

Pierre Sainsevain – first producer of California sparkling wine

Pierre and Jean Louis Sainsevain were nephews of Jean Louis Vignes, a Frenchmen who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1830s and had pioneered the Los Angeles wine trade.  Because of his name, a French compatriot has written of him, ‘he seemed predestined to become the Noah of California’.

The brothers, Pierre and Jean Louis Sainsevain bought over their uncle’s Los Angeles business in the early 1850s and expanded it into San Francisco cellars a few years later.

They bought wine from other growers, as well as making it from their own grapes and those purchased from local vineyards.

The most importance competitors of the Sainsevain were two German named Charles Kohler and John Frohling who arrived in San Francisco in 1853 and began shipping wines to the city from twelve-acre vineyard that they bought in Los Angeles.

In 1857, Sainsevain brothers opened a store in San Francisco.  With the aid of Pierre Debanne, Champagne maker they brought to California from France they bottled 50,000 bottles of sparkling wine in 1857 and another 150,000 in 1858.

They called it Sparkling California Champagne, and it was greeted with much interest, shipments being made to New York and Philadelphia to give it the widest publicity.

In 1860, the first consignment of Sainsevain Brothers wine was shipped to New York through the clipper chip E.T Willets.

Pierre Sainsevain later moved to San Jose, where he continued sparkling wine production on a sporadic basis, but eventually abandoned it.
Pierre Sainsevain – first producer of California sparkling wine