Oliver Belmont

popular name: Sherman Billingsley

date_of_death: October 4, 1966

age: 70

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Sherman Billingsley was an American nightclub owner and former bootlegger who was the founder and owner of New York's Stork Club in Manhattan, New York City. For more than 36 years Billingsley played host, entertained and (in some cases) barred hundreds of social, political, business and theatrical personalities at the Stork Club, once dubbed "the New Yorkiest spot in town."

popular name: Cyrus West Field

date_of_death: July 12, 1892

age: 72

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Cyrus Field (1819-1892) spearheaded the mission to lay the first telegraphic cable across the Atlantic Ocean. As the head of a paper company, he amassed wealth that he used to finance his idea of the transatlantic cable. Leading the Atlantic Telegraph Company, he arranged for the British and American naval ships Agamemnon and Niagara to lay the cable. On August 16, 1858, the first transatlantic message was sent from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. The cable stopped working three weeks later. In 1866, the Great Eastern successfully laid a functioning and more durable cable across the Atlantic. In later years, he supported other trans-ocean cables from Hawaii to Asia and Australia.

popular name: Charles Louis Fleischmann

date_of_death: December 10, 1897

age: 62

cause_of_death: Paralysis

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Charles Louis Fleischmann was a Hungarian-American who, along with his brother Maximilian and another partner, created America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible. It all began in 1870 when, at the instigation of his partner, Charles began to make yeast by a Hungarian method with which he had been long familiar. The patent for making compressed yeast from the froth or scum formed during the manufacture of malt or spirituous liquors was taken out, however, by his brother Henry, who assigned it to Fleischmann & Gaff in return for an annuity. This yeast was slow in finding a market, so that the partners nearly failed. As a last resort they put on a huge exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, at which spectators could see the yeast made, the dough set, and the bread baked, and could then adjourn to a restaurant and eat the bread. The exhibit was popular; the restaurant yielded a cash profit; and the advertising value of the enterprise was enormous. Thereafter there was no trouble in selling Fleischmann’s yeast. After Gaff’s death in 1879, Fleischmann bought his share in the business for $500, 000. His wealth grew rapidly. He became a director in some twenty-five Cincinnati enterprises and was president of a cooperage company, a large vinegar works in Illinois, a newspaper company, and the Market National Bank. He took a hand in civic affairs, was fire commissioner in 1890, was elected as a Republican to the state Senate in 1879 and again in 1895, and was a friend and adviser of William McKinley. Today Fleischmann's Yeast is the #1 seller of yeast and the #2 manufacture of vinegar in the world. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.