Oliver Belmont

popular name: Howard Johnson

date_of_death: June 20, 1972

age: 75

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Howard Johnson was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and the founder of an American chain of restaurants and motels under one company of the same name, Howard Johnson's. For three years he sold cigars,. and then in 1924, when he was 27, he assumed the debts, liquidated the business and bought a run‐down drugstore near the Wollaston railroad station. It had a soda fountain, candy and tobacco counter and newspaper stand, and Mr. Johnson soon had the place bringing in $30,000 a year with a staff of 75 boys delivering papers. Still, it was not until he bought the ice‐cream recipe of an elderly German pushcart vendor that the business took off. The peddler's secret was in doubling the butterfat content of the commercial ice cream and in using natural, instead of synthetic, flavoring. By 1928 the gross from ice cream sold at the Store and at several beach stands nearby reached $240,000, and seven years later Mr. Johnson had 25 restaurants beside Massachusetts highways. Between 1961 and 1979 revenues for the company grew every year. The Howard Johnson Company continued to expand, growing to over 1,000 restaurants and over 500 motor lodges in 42 states and Canada.

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: Nina Ricci

date_of_death: November 28, 1970

age: 87

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Business and Finance

best_know_for: Mme. Ricci, who established her design house in 1932 and built a reputation before World War II for graceful, detailed and feminine clothes, was born in Turin, Italy. A near‐con temporary of Gabrielle Chanel, Mme. Ricci was almost the antithesis of the better‐known “Coco” Chanel, since she was neither a public personality nor a headline‐making designer. Her interest in fashion began in childhood, when she began dressing her dolls. At 13, she came to Paris and found work as a sewing girl, and after five years was promoted to the head of the workroom. At 22, she began designing her own models. The House of Nina Ricci grew rapidly throughout the thirties and their one-room maison de couture became 11 floors in 3 buildings, operations developed by WWII to include leather goods and fashion accessories. She was noted for the graceful draping of her designs, and for her practice of creating her designs on a live model— draping, arranging and cutting until she achieved the desired look.