Tidbits

Napoleon Bonaparte, desperately needed cash to fund his wars in Europe. His colonies in the Americas, especially Louisiana, were becoming a burden — hard to defend and not making enough money.

So he sold Louisiana to the USA for $15 million. But the US government didn’t have that much ready cash lying around. So they turned to big British and Dutch banks (Barings Bank in London and Hope & Co in Amsterdam) to finance the deal.

These banks bought US government bonds — meaning British investors’ money was used to pay France. Napoleon grabbed that cash to build ships, train troops, and prepare for an invasion of Britain.

So, the British banks ended up funding Napoleon’s army that was getting ready to invade Britain itself!

One of Boulanger’s key tactics, described in John Reynold’s Citroën 2CV, involved instructing workers to adopt a deliberately slow production pace for Citroën T45 trucks destined for the Wehrmacht. However, his most ingenious move was deceptively simple: he ordered the oil dipsticks of the trucks to be altered. By moving the notch indicating the proper oil level slightly lower, the engines were consistently underfilled with oil. German mechanics, unaware of the alteration, believed the trucks were adequately lubricated.

This subtle sabotage was both cost-effective and devastating. The trucks initially appeared functional, but over time, their engines seized up, often at critical moments during deployment. The damage was inflicted far from Citroën’s factories, leaving stranded Nazi forces helpless and enraged. Boulanger’s plan exemplified quiet resistance, creating significant disruption for the occupiers without drawing suspicion to the factory workers or management.

Instead, the company was found marketing “Doramad” a toothpaste, containing thorium oxide, a radioactive byproduct from their gas lantern production. Originally for German troops, it was advertised as improving gum health by increasing blood circulation and killing germs.

Auergesellschaft, a massive chemical company, saw the end of the war as a threat to their wartime business, such as gas masks. Looking to diversify, they planned to enter the booming post-war cosmetics market by leveraging the popularity of toiletries in the U.S.

Doramad toothpaste, with its claimed “biologically active” radioactive ingredients, was their strategy to capitalize on this trend.

During WWI, in 1915, the British were fighting Germans who had a monopoly over glass lenses used in rifle scopes & binoculars. Due to shortage of glass equipment’s for soldiers, it became an issue.

Later, after much thought, a secret agent was dispatched to Switzerland to negotiate a supply of more than 32000 pairs of Zeiss glass binoculars & rifle scopes. The seller was Germany. Why?

Cause, the British had a monopoly & blocked sales of rubber to Germans, which used it to make tyres, gloves, etc. which were in high demand. Both decided to give in and share.

Surpirsingly, rubber was native to South America. The first saplings of rubber were stolen by Henry Wickham. Only a fraction survived which were distributed to Asian farmers to grow. The saplings survived because of a “Wardian glass” case container used during transportation.

The United Fruit Company, gained massive trade concessions and controlled extensive public land, becoming the world's leading banana exporter due to non-communist leaders like Jorge Ubico and Manuel Cabrera from 1900 to 1944.

In 1950, a democratic government led by Arbenz implemented extensive reforms, impacting United Fruit's business by expropriating public land for private use. To retaliate, the company heavily lobbied the US government, leading to a CIA-backed coup called PBSuccess.

This coup removed the democratic government and installed a military dictatorship under Carlos Armas, all in an effort to eliminate "Soviet influence" from Guatemala. Tragically, this event triggered a 35-year Civil War, claiming 200,000 lives, all stemming from a private company's quest for resource monopolization.

John Queeny, was a salesman for Meyers Brothers Drug Company. He left it, and started a chemical company. In the initial years, he focused on developing saccharin and processing tea leaves for caffeine,becoming a trusted supplier of Coca Cola for its soft drinks business. This would be the turning point.

The business became profitable. During World War 2, it was deeply involved in many chemicals including purifying Polonium used in the famous Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project of 1940s.

It would later become a ubiquitous household name for its GM seeds and crops, Agent Orange (during Vietnam War) and Roundup, a glyphosate fertiliser that revolutionised agri-farming.

That company is Monsanto Company, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018 for $66 billion.

In the 1975 season, although initially not winning, Niki Lauda stormed to victory in an unbeatable Ferrari, followed by Fittipaldi in a McLaren.

In the penultimate race at Monza in September, Lauda’s chance to win the world championship was endangered. An FIA official took a sample of the fuel from his car, which had come third. ‘Is the fuel OK?’ Lauda asked Luca, the Ferrari team principal. ‘Yes,’ her replied. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Well, we’re trying something,’.

Lauda ran to Bernie Ecclestone, the legendary British magnate who managed FIA: ‘They’re checking my fuel. Can you help?’ Ecclestone found the FIA steward. ‘Let me look at that sample,’ he ordered, grabbing the test-tube. ‘It doesn’t look like fuel to me,’ he scoffed as he poured it out. ‘It’s piss.’ Lauda went on to win the championship.

The software was improved by Lee Daniel, who was the co-creator of PNG format and involved in GIF and JPEG format also. Jimmy then co-founded Fandom or “Wikia” with Angela Beesley. Its CTO was Artur Bergman who founded “Fastly” in 2011, a Cloud Computing service. It acquired “Glitch” (formerly Fog Creeks) in 2022 which was a project management tool developed by Joel Spolsky.

Spolsky was the creator of the legendary Kanban tool - “Trello” - which was sold to Atlassian in 2017. He was instrumental in 2000s for running the Microsoft Visual Basic team. He would later go on to start “Stack Overflow” along with Jeff Atwood - that revolutionised the way we write codes!

During the 1930s-1940s, Albert Reimann, a descendant, was an active member of the Hitler’s Nazi party or NSDAP. His family also supported the dreaded Gestapo and SS forces, and used hundreds of forced labor workers from concentration camps to work in their factories.

After the war, they collaborated with Peter Harf, an HBS alum who worked to turn the name after merging Reckitt and Colman to the now famous Reckitt Benckiser!

The steel that was/is used to develop extremely radioactive sensitive materials like Geiger Counter, Particle Accelerators and even parts of Spacecraft, is called “Low Background Steel” that is salvaged from underwater shipwrecks.

Low background steel means steel produced before the nuclear explosion of 1930s and 1940s that were responsible for polluting the air with tiny radionuclides such as Cobalt-60. Hence, steel produced using pure oxygen today has small amount of radioactive particles that may not be suitable for use in some specific materials.

Dealers target pre and World War era shipwrecks to extract steel from Java & South China Sea for the same.

It so happened that pyjamas were not a fashion choice/time for people especially in Britain. Then came the First World War with Bomber aircrafts from Germany making night raids on UK. So much so that people were ordered to be alert and be ready to vacate their premises upon warning.

So, to vacate their homes and carry essential stuff, the pyjamas were really handy. It had large pockets to fill it with items and also not so bad outfit that could be easily worn and provide flexibility in movement. It was nicknamed the World War Onesie.

And that’s how, slowly, men and women started wearing pyjamas in night that ultimately turned into a household fashion!

The original HB song was developed in course from another song “Good Morning to All” for kindergarten students that carried the same tune and theme.

In 1912, the first melody & lyrics appeared and Warner Bros bought the ownership to the song at a deal of $5 million that would last until 2030 and any use was illegal without permission. The song had a royalty of $700.

In 2013, a film director, Jennifer Nelson filed a court case over the claim after she received a bill of $1500 for the song use. The case was finally concluded by 2015 & ruled against Warner citing that it held copyrights to certain melodic tunes and not the lyrics.

It also paid $14 million collected as part of royalties over the years. The most popular song in the world finally became free!

During World War II, Germans launched nightly aerial bombing to demoralise Britain. Fortunately, the RAF resistance made it impossible for them to gain an upper hand.

Actually, in 1934, there were rumours of Germans using radio waves to immobilise aircrafts mid air. A commission was set up & found the claims to be fake.

But, they found that a transmitter could be used to detect aircraft movements from far off. Robert Watson and his team developed prototype that came to be known as RADAR. It was improvised & mounted on aircrafts that helped night pilots to easily detect enemy bombers.

To conceal this tech, British army told Germans that such success was due to the pilots having developed night vision by eating carrots & the rumour stayed!

Christopher Clayton Hutton, was a lieutenant who mastered the art of creating escape methods for Allied soldiers from German prisoner camps via unorthodox ways.

Monopoly game came to UK in 1935 & sold by Jhon Waddington Company. Clayton teamed up with them to develop special monopoly board games that would contain kits for prisoners to escape.

His team created many bogus organisations that sent secret packages to prisoners. These had game boards that contained cash, tools and cryptic messages for instructions to escape. Clayton trained squad members to send & reply coded messages to and fro.

Every camp had an escape team that ensured that the packages were safely distributed to the soldiers. These were later revealed by British Soy agency, MI9 in 1985.

By the 1900s, board games were popular in the US. Elizabeth Magie, a stenographer, hit upon an idea of a game that showed a capitalist system of economic exploitation.

Dubbed the “Landlord’s Game”, players took turns to compete & grab land spaces through labor, paying wages or getting rewards. In 1903, Lizzie patented the game and published it via the “Economic Game Company”, a New York firm.

The game started getting traction. In 1932, two friends, Charles Todd & Charles Darrow regularly played this game. Darrow was really impressed and noted the rules.

In 1934, he made his own game called “Monopoly” and sold it to “Parker Brothers”. Hasbro acquired the game in 1991 and made it a household name. Today, 250 million boards have been sold with over a billion players worldwide!

Gore Associates is a billion dollar company based out of Delaware, USA. It produces water resistant Gore-Tex fabric & dental flosses along with industrial fabrics.

It has a unique lattice structure where employees are “Associate” irrespective of their experience or level. There are no bosses but “mentors”. Salaries & benefits are determined collectively. It has been profitable for more than 50 years without any budgets or KPIs!

Every plant has exactly 150 members. 150 is the Dunbar’s Number - a cognitive limit to the number of people with which one can have stable social interaction.

This helps to maintain a sticky environment for employees to thrive & know each other well with attrition at 3%. In fact, Gore is a veteran in Fortune’s Great Places to Work!

Henry Wesley Coover, was a chemist at Eastman Kodak. In 1942, his team were developing plastic gun sights for the US army. They accidentally discovered a sticky compound, “Cyanoacrylate” - which was discarded.

He encountered it again while developing Jet Plane Canopies. Due to excellent adhesive properties, It was patented for commercial uses by the name - “Eastman 910” which came to be known as Super Glue.

It was actually used in wars to treat injuries. Field Surgeons applied it to seal soldier’s wounds before being transported to hospital for treatment. Later, it was improved for uses in medical surgeries.

For his discovery, Henry was nicknamed “Mr. Super Glue”!

In January 1942, The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper agency in UK, received a mysterious note from “Mr. Gavin” containing a crossword puzzle challenge.

The note described that if anyone could solve the puzzle within 12 mins, Gavin would donate £100 to charity. So, the agency invited 25 participants to the office. From these, only 4 people were able to beat the challenge.

Weeks later, the Allied War Office offered the winners to work at Bletchley Park - a secret facility that specialised in Cypher & Code Breaking during the World War II.

It was later revealed to be an elaborate plan of recruiting brilliant people that could help crack the “Enigma” cypher of the Nazis!

On Feb 23rd, 2000, Jennifer Lopez, wore a Green Silk dress for the 42nd Grammy Awards that took Google by storm.

In 2015, Eric Shcmidt, acknowledged the “Green Dress” - designed by Luxury Fashion company, Versace - that led to the idea of Google Image Search.

Back in 2000, Google hadn’t been optimised to display direct images. It rather showed links to other sites - leading to bad UX.

Huican Zhu & Susan Wojcicki (CEO, YouTube) spearheaded the development and launched the feature on July 12, 2001.

Today, with 136 billion indexed images and 10 billion searches a day, it remains one of the best features of Google!