William Procter

popular name: Caleb Bradham

date_of_death: February 19, 1934

age:

cause_of_death: Hardening of the arteries with complications

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Caleb Bradham was an American pharmacist who is best known as the inventor of soft drink Pepsi. Around 1890, he dropped out of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, owing to his father's business going bankrupt. After returning to North Carolina, he was a public school teacher for about a year, and soon thereafter opened a drug store in New Bern named the "Bradham Drug Company" that, like many other drug stores of the time, also housed a soda fountain. Middle Street and Pollock Street in downtown New Bern is where Bradham, in 1893, invented the recipe—a blend of kola nut extract, vanilla, and "rare oils"—for what was initially known as "Brad's Drink." On August 28, 1898 was Bradham renamed the drink Pepsi-Cola, named after a combination of the terms “pepsin” and “cola,” as he believed that his drink aided digestion much like the pepsin enzyme does, even though it was not used as an ingredient. His assistant James Henry King was the first to taste the new drink. At the peak of success in 1922, Bradham had authorized Pepsi-Cola franchises in over 24 states.

popular name: Alva Vanderbilt Belmont

date_of_death: January 26, 1933

age: 80

cause_of_death: Natural Causes

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the American women's suffrage movement. She was noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention. In 1909, she founded the Political Equality League to get votes for suffrage-supporting New York State politicians, wrote articles for newspapers, and joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She was married twice, first to William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and secondly to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont; both men were millionaires and members of socially prominent families in New York City. Alva was known for her many building projects, including: the Petit Chateau in New York; the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island; the Belmont House in New York; Brookholt in Long Island; and Beacon Towers in Sands Point, New York.

popular name: Barbara Hutton

date_of_death: May 11, 1979

age: 66

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Barbara Woolworth Hutton was born in New York City on 14 November 1912, the daughter of Edna and Franklyn Hutton and the granddaughter of Frank Winfield Woolworth, founder of the phenomenally successful chain of retail "five and dime" stores named Woolworths. Her mother died when she was only four years old and, until his death in 1919, Barbara Hutton was cared for by her grandfather. Subsequently her life became even more unsettled as she was moved from one relative to another, her father always ready with material but not the emotional support and love for which she longed. This disorganised start to her life obviously had a strong impact on her as an adult. The only stable aspect of her lifeappears to have been the vast fortune she inherited from her grandparents and her mother: before she was in her teens, she had well over $28 million in trust, and this was to be nearly doubled by the time she came of age. She partied, travelled, and lived a life of excessive excitement and self-indulgence, but even after seven marriages, she was still the ‘poor little rich girl’ of Noël Coward’s 1920s song, never finding the contentment she craved. After a lifetime of society balls and parties around the world and seven failed marriages, Barbara, nearly blind at 66, died bedridden and alone of a heart attack in 1979 in the penthouse of The Beverly Wilshire Hotel. She had $3,500 in the bank.