Unusual Origins in Business

Tom Williams, a 19-year-old chemist in Chicago, saw his sister Mabel use Vaseline and coal dust to fix her eyelashes. 

Williams engineered his own version and named it Maybelline in her honor.

During the seasonal flu of 1928, Hub Beardsley, president of Miles Laboratory in Elkhart, Indiana, heard the reporters at the local paper were mixing baking soda and aspirin and weren't getting sick. Beardsley and his chemists were inspired to develop a similar concoction, which resulted in the invention of Alka-Seltzer.

Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld worked in the textile remnant business making pencil cases and other school supplies. Hasbro's first toys were modeling clay and nurse kits, with their first big success coming in 1952 with the release of Mr. Potato Head.

Chemical giant DuPont was founded in 1802, when French immigrant Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours opened a gunpowder mill near Wilmington, Delaware, two years after he and his family escaped the French Revolution.

Started in 1902 in Two Harbors, Minnesota, 3M originally stood for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. The company pivoted when they realized their mineral holdings had no commercial value.