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Trivia ~ Man Made
~ Business ~
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
The world's oldest continuously incorporated company is Canada's Hudson's Bay Company, which was founded in 1670. The company also became the largest corporate landowner with holdings that at one time included about one third of present-day Canada.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
How do companies make themselves appear to be in better shape than they really are?
Cooking the books is a recipe for disaster, as Enron and Arthur Andersen executives learned when they were called to account. Amazingly, corporations can sometimes do this while barely staying within the limits of the law.
They can screw stockholders and the public by, for example, padding orders, sending more of a product than was requested, boosting accounts receivable and making it seem as if revenues are higher than they are. They can also save money, showing higher profits, by overestimating the expected return on investments, thus decreasing the amount they might have to put into an employee pension fund. Corporate honchos also get cute with "related party transactions," buying a small business and then having that business turn around and buy goods and services from the mother company.
Maybe Captain Kidd would have met a better end had he defined buried treasure as an off-the-books, non-disbursed accrual.
As of April 8, 2001, the postal deficit was $270 million. This is $10 million less than the $280 million given in management bonuses.
The worlds largest McDonalds is over I-44 in Vinita, Oklahoma. It goes from one side of the interstate to the other, passing over the interstate.
If you wanted to make a safe bet on a business that doesn’t cook its books these days, try casinos. It’s a cash-based business, and because of a history of involvement of organized crime in its past operations, it’s strictly regulated by the government. Some casinos even have government regulators on the premises.
Talk about bold management: they take chances every minute of the day. (And, unlike the stock markets, the bettors' odds are the same whether they wager $1 or $1 million....)
The most costly "White-Collar" crime on record was perpetrated by Yasuo Hamanaka, a Japanese copper trader, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to forgery and fraud in connection with illicit trading that cost his employer, Sumitomo, an estimated $2.6 billion dollars over ten years.
The LEGO company was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen in Billund, Denmark, in 1916. Today it has over 9,000 employees worldwide. The Danish words Leg and Godt were put together to make "LEGO." Later, it was discovered that in Latin, the term "Lego" means "I put together" or "I assemble."
The company that makes Legos blocks has been training management consultants to use their product in “play sessions” with executives. The consultants encourage these groups of corporate managers to express themselves with the blocks.
That doesn’t bother me. I’m concerned when these guys play Monopoly.
The average office workstation has 400 times more bacteria than the average office toilet?
Believe it or not the Ford Motor Company considered developing an atomic car in the early 1950s. It would have been powered by a nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle. But they dropped the idea, possibly fearing that it would have bombed.
Speaking of cars; most auto accidents happen near the driver's home, Duh? That's where most driving is done. One could also safely conjecture that most drivers involved in auto accidents were riding in a car.
What was the first HMO?
If by HMO we mean a private, layperson controlled, prepaid, comprehensive and affordable health care plan open to all, we're still waiting. Mine helps me restrict calories because I have to go a week without eating each month to pay the bill.
Doctor controlled organizations such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield and union-negotiated plans in the late 1930s geared to specific industries laid the groundwork for the HMO's we all know and love today. Credit for the first goes to industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. As many as 200,000 workers in World War II defense plants under his control were covered by a plan called Permanente. After the war, he opened up the organization to the public and it became the Kaiser- Permanente health plan, the model for our present-day HMO's.
By the way, the term Health Maintenance Organization, or HMO, was only first used in 1970. I have another term for them, but this is a family web site/newsletter.
How did secure, relativity high-yielding stocks get to become called "Blue Chip" stocks ?
The term was taken from the game of poker, where blue chips are more valuable than white or red chips. Well you knew the stock market was a gamble didn't you?
The first company ever to issue stock was "The mysterie and companie of Merchants adventurers for the discoverie of regions, dominians, islands, and places unknown" (later simplified to "The Russia Company"), which was chartered in 1553.
The LEGO company was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen in Billund, Denmark, in 1916. Today it has over 9,000 employees worldwide. The Danish words Leg (alloy) and Godt (well) were put together to make "LEGO." Later, it was discovered that in Latin, the term "Lego" means "I put together" or "I assemble."
These days in business it's important to dress for success. In fact, that was always the case, but the context was different in the past. For example, while a self-help book might now explain how you should dress when traveling on a plane with colleagues, 60 years ago it would have dealt with train travel.
Such a book, "Compete!", advised in 1935: "Don't trail up and down a Pullman in a floating, peach-colored negligee, frothy with lace or feathers. It might put you over in a big way in a boudoir, but not on a train."
Especially if you're a guy.
These days you can get 12 pens for a $1.79, or you can pay $80.000 for a single, limited edition, gold, platinum and diamond fountain pen. If what you're writing is not so rarified, try the $2,800 model with a sliver of one of Babe Ruth's bats embedded in it. According to the Wall Street Journal, 35 companies sell such pens.
Do you suppose they spell any better than my 12 for a $1.79 model?
Designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel introduced her first perfume in 1921. She gave it the name "Chanel No. 5." According to Chanel, she jumped straight to number five because it was her lucky number. To add luck to the fragrance, she introduced it on the fifth day of May, the fifth month. Chanel No. 5 became the world's best selling perfume.
Three hundred and fourteen acres of trees are used to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of the New York Times. There are nearly 63,000 trees in the 314 acres.
Wig making is an $800 million a year industry in the U. S. There are even hair brokers in a business where the finest - each strand hand-tied - wig can cost $10,000. Much of the hair comes from India, where people have it cut in a religious ritual, after which, it somehow ends up in the wig trade. I wonder if that's where the Christian term "fleecing the flock" came from.
I hope the IRS accountants go over their books with a fine- toothed comb.
McDonald's fast-food restaurants have been operating in the Middle East and Africa since 1992. The success was especially evident when 15,000 customers lined up on opening day in 1994 in Kuwait City. The line at the drive-thru window was seven miles long.
The wages paid by the Ford auto company were once much higher than those paid by other automobile companies. In 1914, Ford paid workers who were age 22 or older $5 per day-- double the average wage offered by other car factories.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
