Curated playlist
American company founders
- John D. RockefellerJohn D. Rockefeller, the son of a traveling con artist, became the first billionaire in the United States.
- Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton was still a teenager in 1771 when the owner of Beekman and Cruger, an import-export firm on the island of Saint Croix, sailed away and left him running the place for five months. The young man had been born out of…
- Walt DisneyIn 1928, Walt Disney lost his hit cartoon rabbit Oswald to Universal. Only Ub Iwerks stayed, and Mickey Mouse followed.
- Allison ShearmurAllison Shearmur broke into Hollywood by winning a campus contest.
- David LettermanDavid Letterman got fired from campus radio for treating classical music irreverently.
- SelenaSelena Quintanilla-Pérez was 23 years old when she died on the 31st of March 1995, and major television networks interrupted their regular programming to announce it. She was a singer from Texas who performed Tejano music, a…
- Andrew CarnegieAndrew Carnegie sat down in 1868, at the age of 33, and wrote himself a memo that read like a vow. He called the piling up of wealth one of the worst forms of idolatry. He planned to cap his income at $50,000 a year and retire from…
- Keith RaniereKeith Raniere was addressed by his followers as Vanguard, and for twenty years he led a company in Albany, New York, called NXIVM. The company sold personal development seminars. From 1998 to 2018 it drew 700 members at its height, among…
- Elizabeth HolmesElizabeth Holmes was twenty-nine years past her first day at Stanford when Forbes named her the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States. That was in 2015. The magazine based its judgment on a valuation of…
- Lamar HuntLamar Hunt first called the Super Bowl by that name as a joke. He wrote that the name "obviously can be improved upon."
- Jennifer LopezJennifer Lopez wore a plunging green Versace silk chiffon dress to the Grammy Awards in February 2000, and a single outfit changed how people used the internet. The dress became the most popular search query in Google's history. That flood…
- Selena GomezIn 2016, Selena Gomez became the first person to reach 100 million followers on Instagram, a milestone Time later singled out in its Firsts series. Gomez is an American actress, singer, songwriter, businesswoman, and producer, born in…
- Drew BarrymoreDrew Barrymore was seven years old when she hosted Saturday Night Live on the 20th of November 1982, and nobody has hosted at a younger age since. The American actress went on to build a career that ran from child stardom to her own…