Life Story Of Hugh Herr

BEFORE:

A prodigy rock climber, by age eight he had scaled the face of the 11,627-foot Mount Temple in the Canadian Rockies, and by 17 he was acknowledged to be one of the best climbers in the United States. In January 1982, after having ascended a difficult technical ice route in Huntington Ravine on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, Herr and a fellow climber Jeff Batzer were caught in a blizzard and became disoriented, ultimately descending into the Great Gulf where they passed three nights in −29 °C degree temperatures. By the time they were rescued, the climbers had suffered severe frostbite. Both of Herr’s legs had to be amputated below the knees; his companion lost his lower left leg, the toes on his right foot, and the fingers on his right hand.

AFTER:

While a postdoctoral fellow at MIT in biomedical devices, he began working on advanced leg prostheses and orthoses, devices that emulate the functionality of the human leg. Using specialized prostheses that he designed, he created prosthetic feet with high toe stiffness that made it possible to stand on small rock edges the width of a coin, and titanium-spiked feet that assisted him in ascending steep ice walls. He used these prostheses to alter his height to avoid awkward body positions and to grab the hand and foot holds previously out of reach. His height could range from five to eight feet.

As a result of using the prostheses, Herr climbed at a more advanced level than he had before the accident, making him the first person with a major amputation to perform in a sport on par with elite-level, able-bodied persons.

Also Read Bear Gryll's Life Story

Bear Gryll's Life Story

BEFORE:

After leaving school, he briefly considered joining the Indian Army and hiked in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim and West Bengal. Eventually, he joined the Territorial Army and, after passing selection, served as a reservist with the SAS in 21 SAS Regiment (Artists) (Reserve), for three years until 1997.

In 1996, he suffered a free-fall parachuting accident in Zambia. His canopy ripped at 16,000 ft, partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three vertebrae. He later said: “I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem”. According to his surgeon, he came “within a whisker” of being paralyzed for life and at first it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. He spent the next 12 months in and out of military rehabilitation.

AFTER:

In a showcase of what pure determination and hard work can do, on 16 May 1998 he achieved his childhood dream climbed to the summit of Mount Everest, 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a parachuting accident.

At 23, he was at the time among the youngest people to have achieved this feat. This is the inspirational story of the amazing Bear Grylls. He is known to the world as a television presenter for the Discovery Channel, with his own show called Man Vs. Wild.

Also Visit Life Story Of Barack Obama

Life Story Of Barack Obama

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States—becoming the first African American to serve in that office—on January 20, 2009.

The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama grew up in Hawaii. Leaving the state to attend college, he earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, where he met and married Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in 1992. Their two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha (Sasha), were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996 and served there for eight years. In 2004, he was elected by a record majority to the US Senate from Illinois and, in February 2007, announced his candidacy for president. After winning a closely fought contest against New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Obama handily defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee for president, in the general election.

When President Obama took office, he faced very significant challenges. The economy was officially in a recession, and the outgoing administration of George W. Bush had begun to implement a controversial "bail-out" package to try to help struggling financial institutions. In foreign affairs, the United States still had troops deployed in difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the first two years of his first term, President Obama was able to work with the Democratic-controlled Congress to improve the economy, pass health-care reform legislation, and withdraw most US troops from Iraq. After the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 2010, the president spent significant time and political effort negotiating, for the most part unsuccessfully, with congressional Republicans about taxes, budgets, and the deficit. After winning reelection in 2012, Obama began his second term focused on securing legislation on immigration reform and gun control, neither of which he was able to achieve. When the Republicans won the Senate in 2014, Obama refocused on actions that he could take unilaterally, invoking his executive authority as president. In foreign policy, Obama concentrated during the second term on the Middle East and climate change.

Obama left the presidency, at age fifty-five, after his constitutionally limited two terms ended on January 20, 2017. He announced plans to remain in Washington, DC, until his younger daughter finished high school and, as a former president, to play a restrained but active role in public affairs. He also devoted energy to raising money and planning for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Short Biography Of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, in full Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, (born May 14, 1984, Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.), American computer programmer who was cofounder and CEO (2004– ) of Facebook, a social networking Web site.

After attending Phillips Exeter Academy, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University in 2002. On February 4, 2004, he launched thefacebook.com (renamed Facebook in 2005), a directory in which fellow Harvard students entered their own information and photos into a template that he had devised. Within two weeks half of the student body had signed up. Zuckerberg’s roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, helped him add features and make the site available to other campuses across the country. Facebook quickly became popular as registered users could create profiles, upload photos and other media, and keep in touch with friends. It differed from other social networking sites, however, in its emphasis on real names (and e-mail addresses), or “trusted connections.” It also laid particular emphasis on networking, with information disseminated not only to each individual’s network of friends but also to friends of friends—what Zuckerberg called the “social graph.”

In the summer of 2004 the trio moved their headquarters to Palo Alto, California, where Zuckerberg talked venture capitalist Peter Thiel into giving them seed money. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to concentrate on the fledgling company, of which he became CEO and president. In May 2005 Facebook received its first major infusion of venture capital ($12.7 million). Four months later Facebook opened to registration by high-school students. Meanwhile, foreign colleges and universities also began to sign up, and by September 2006 anyone with an e-mail address could join a regional network based on where he or she lived. About that time Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!, but in 2007 Facebook struck a deal with Microsoft in which the software company paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook; two years later Digital Sky Technologies purchased a 1.96 percent share for $200 million. In 2008 Zuckerberg’s new worth was estimated at about $1.5 billion. After Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO) of stock in 2012, Zuckerberg’s net worth was estimated at more than $19 billion.

Life Story Of George Soros

George Soros is a self-made billionaire known for his investment savvy and his vast body of philanthropic work.

Introduction

Born in Budapest, Hungary, on August 12, 1930, George Soros survived Nazi occupation followed by Communist-rule in Hungary in the mid-1940s and emigrated to London. There he studied economics and after earning his degree, moved to New York City in 1956, where he entered a life of finance. He began his renowned philanthropic efforts in 1979, and as of 2012 his lifetime giving amounted to more than $7 billion via his Open Society Foundations.

Past

George Soros was born Gyorgy Schwartz in Budapest, Hungary, on August 12, 1930, to parents Tividar and Erzebat Schwartz. To avoid growing anti-Semite persecution, his father changed their surname to Soros in 1936. As a teenager, he survived the Nazi invasion and occupation of Hungary in 1944. 

After WWII ended, Soros emigrated from the then-Communist-dominated Hungary in 1947 and made his way to England. There, at the London School of Economics, Soros began studying Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, which explores the philosophy of science and serves as Popper’s critique of totalitarianism. The essential lesson the book imparted to Soros was that no ideology owns the truth, and that societies can flourish only when they operate freely and openly and maintain respect for individual rights—thoughts that would deeply influence Soros for the rest of his life.

Success

Soros graduated in 1952, and in September 1956 he sailed to New York and took a job at Wall Street brokerage firm F.M. Mayer. After working for a few more firms, in 1973 Soros set up his own hedge fund (the Soros Fund, soon after renamed the Quantum Fund and later the Quantum Fund Endowment) with $12 million from investors. The fund, with Soros at the helm, found massive success through its various iterations, and as of September 2015, Soros, at 85 years of age, was deemed as the 21st richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $26 billion.

Activities and Controversies

George Soros began his philanthropic activity in 1979, and he established the Open Society Foundations in 1984. The foundations fund a range of global initiatives “to advance justice, education, public health, business development and independent media.” The causes Soros helps with his foundations are numerous (the foundations’ list of activities goes on for 500 pages), but they include aiding in regions struck by natural disaster, establishing after-school programs in New York City, funding the arts, lending financial assistance to the Russian university system, fighting disease and combating “brain drain” in Eastern Europe.

While a towering figure in the philanthropic world, George Soros is also a provocative figure. Among his controversial positions are that he supports altering the United States’ “war on drugs” to avoid the current extent of criminalization; he was involved in and profited heavily from the U.K. currency crisis of 1992 (dubbed Black Wednesday); he has written several books on the looming collapse of the financial markets (and certain observers accuse him of manipulating the markets to reach his ends); and he has said that policies of the United States and Israel have given rise to global anti-Semitism.

Appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2018, Soros called for stricter regulations on Facebook and Google.

"They claim they are merely distributing information," he said. "But the fact that they are near-monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access."

Soros also suggested the tech behemoths could "compromise themselves" to enter the Chinese market, thereby melding corporate surveillance with state-sponsored surveillance to produce "a web of totalitarian control." 

Controversial or beloved, with his countless organizations (through which he shapes public policy and undertakes vast humanitarian projects), financial empire and the 14 books he’s written on subjects ranging from the war on terror to global capitalism, George Soros is an influential figure and a giant in finance and the realm of philanthropy.

Life Story Of Christ Gardener

 Chris Gardner : Once The Man Without Shelter Now Provides Shelter

 One of the most inspiring rags-to-riches stories is that of Chris Gardner, an American multi-millionaire stockbroker and motivational speaker, who had a troubled childhood, growing up with three half-sisters and an abusive step father in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Chris, who became famous after a movie based on his life starring Will Smith was released in 2006, is now reportedly worth $60 million.

He was able to rise above all the hardships, and achieve success in life because he always remembered his mother Bettye Jean’s words, “Son, if you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.”

He shares his story in a book titled ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ that he has co-written with Quincy Troupe.

Chris grew up in a tough black neighborhood, where he admits to having smoked marijuana, stolen things, and got into fights.

Until he was in his twenties, he had not seen his biological father, Thomas Turner, whom he finally located to introduce him to his toddler son. When he was a kid, his step father Freddie Triplett always hurt him saying that he was not his dad and used to beat him often.

Chris was so angry with Freddie that he planned to kill him, but mercifully failed to achieve his goal. His mother was sent to prison after she allegedly tried to burn the house when Freddie was sleeping inside.

Chris managed to stay positive at all times, even though he had been in situations like once when his gun-wielding step father threw him out of the house during one Christmas.

“I was put out of the house, butt naked, at gun point. To this day, I still have a problem with Christmas…

“(But) I made a decision that I was going to be everything that this guy was not. I am not going to drink, I am not going to beat women, I am not going to be ignorant.

“One of the tactics that I developed as a young kid was I would read out aloud and I will be saying to the sky that you can beat me down, you can beat me, you can beat my mom, you can put us out of here, put a gun, but I can read. I am going places,” he told Channel 20/20 in an interview.

Both Chris and his mother loved reading. They were fans of Reader’s Digest and would read the magazine cover to cover. Chris would visit the public library and spend hours reading the books there.

As a teenager Chris had done odd jobs like washing dishes at a restaurant, and attending to elderly patients at a nursing home, where he used to handle their bed pans.

After high school at age 18 he joined the US Navy with the hope of seeing the world. However, he got posted at the US Navy Hospital Corps School in Great Lakes, Illinois, where he received training in the basics of first-aid and later served at the Navy Regional Medical Center, Jacksonville.

Post his stint in the navy, he worked at a research lab in San Francisco and seriously considered getting professionally qualified as a doctor. He also worked part time as a security guard, and took up painting jobs in the weekends to earn some extra bucks.

However, he was nowhere close to achieving his dream of making big money when his son Christopher Jarrett Medina Gardner Jr. was born on January 28, 1981.

Under pressure to earn more, he took up a job as a sales representative in CMS, a medical equipment company for an annual salary of around $30,000 and later joined their competitor Van Waters and Rogers.

But his meeting with a man who owned a red Ferrari 308 changed his life after he asked the latter two simple questions: ‘What do you do?’ and ‘How do you do that.’ He learned that the man, Bob Bridges, was a stock broker and he earned $80,000 per month.

Suddenly it dawned on him that this was the job that would make him a millionaire. He determinedly pursued his goal, though he was told that most people in Wall Street were MBAs. He eventually joined Dean Witter as a trainee for a monthly stipend of $1,000.

He encountered some of the greatest difficulties in his life during this period when as a single parent he had to look after his toddler son. Chris recounts in his book how he was homeless, and had slept with his son even in a public bathroom in a railway station on many occasions.

From Dean Witter he moved to Bear Stearns, where his earnings kept increasing until he made his first million dollars in 1985.

In 1987, he founded his own brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Company. On making positive choices in life, he told in an interview to BBC, "I chose light, from my mother, and from others with whom I don't share a single drop of blood, and I embraced it."

This Article is Part of the Series ‘World’s Biggest Entrepreneurs’

Read  Biography Of Sheldon Adelson

Biography Of Sheldon Adelson

Sheldon Adelson developed COMDEX, a computer trade show, which made him a fortune and launched him into the casino resort business.

Synopsis
Sheldon Adelson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1933 and became an entrepreneur at an early age. He created several very successful businesses, and in the 1970s developed the computer trade show COMDEX. He went on to build casino resorts in Las Vegas and Asia, and later ventured into politics, generously supporting Republican causes and candidates.

Early Career
The story of Sheldon Gary Adelson, born in the poor Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1933, is a classic American rags-to-riches story. Sheldon’s father drove a taxicab and sold advertisements, and his mother ran a small knitting store. Sheldon start working at a young age selling newspapers, and by age 12 he owned his first business, selling toiletries.

In the early 1950s, he entered City College of New York, majoring in corporate finance, but dropped out after less than two years. He joined the U.S. Army and started working as a court stenographer on Wall Street, where he set his sights on making his fortune. After leaving the Army, he worked as a mortgage broker and investment adviser and soon made his first fortune. In the early 1960s, he moved back to Boston and invested in various companies, among them a travel and tour business, The American International Travel Service, which was very profitable. However, his success turned sour in a stock market decline in the late 1960s.

In the early 1970s, Adelson rebounded in the real estate brokerage business in Boston, arranging condominium conversions, and did well for a time until the condo market took a dive. Scrambling to find a lifeline, he caught a big break when he bought a company that published magazines, among them Data Communications User, a computer magazine. After attending a condo trade convention, he learned that the producer was a condo magazine publisher. Adelson believed the same effort could be made for the computer business and started a trade show for the computer industry.

With the modest success of his first show in 1973, Sheldon Adelson could see he was onto something. He sold his condominium holdings and the publishing company, but held on to the trade show business, launching the Interface Group and concentrating on the computer show. The company grew slowly, garnering only $250,000 in its first year of operation. Around this time, Adelson met his first wife, Sandra, and in time they adopted three children. They divorced in 1988.

In 1979, Sheldon Adelson created the Computer Dealers Expo, or COMDEX, and held the show at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. His timing was perfect, as the personal computer industry was just taking off. As brands such as IBM, Apple and Microsoft began their rapid growth, Adelson’s trade show was there to present their products to consumers and to other companies. By 1987, COMDEX had grossed $20 million and become the largest trade show in Las Vegas. By the end of the decade, the Interface Group had reached a net income of $250 million and expanded COMDEX shows into other countries.

Casino Magnate
By the late 1980s, Adelson and his partners began looking for hotel property to complement their travel companies and their several private jets. In 1988, they purchased the legendary Sands Casino for $128 million, famed for being the hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Adelson redesigned the Sands to his business model. He built a resort, shopping mall and convention center for his company’s events, including COMDEX. He also began his notorious battles with regulatory authorities and unions while constructing the new Sands Casino and Convention Center.

In 1991, Sheldon Adelson met his wife Miriam, an Israeli-born physician specializing in drug abuse treatment. While honeymooning in Italy, he was inspired by the canals and architecture of Venice and began to envision a mega-resort hotel. In 1995, he sold COMDEX to a Japanese firm for $860 million, with a personal share of over $500 million. Free now to make his own deals with Wall Street bankers, Adelson shed his partnerships with Interface and ventured out on his own to build his $1.5 billion Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Despite legal and contractual battles with unions and contractors, the resort opened in 1999 and was wildly successful.

Following the success of the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Through business associates he was able to negotiate an agreement to open another Venetian casino resort on the Chinese island of Macao, which had recently become the center of a massive Asian gambling market. In 2006, Adelson was awarded a hotly contested license to construct a casino resort at Singapore’s Marina Bay. The Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Casino opened in 2010 at a rumored cost of $5.5 billion.

Campaign Funding
In the 2000s, Sheldon Adelson began to lend his influence and wealth to political candidates of his liking. Originally a Democrat, Adelson became a Republican as his wealth increased. He became dissatisfied with paying higher tax rates and clashed with trade unions, both of which were supported by Democrats. In 2004, Adelson contributed $250,000 to the second inaugural of George W. Bush. In 2008, he became the principal backer of Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct political advocacy group established to counter the influence of George Soros and other Democratic-leaning billionaires.
In 2010, Adelson donated $1 million to American Solutions for Winning the Future, a political action committee supporting the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich. By February 2012, Adelson and his wife had added an additional $10 million to Gingrich’s failed campaign. Soon after, he transferred his support to presidential nominee Mitt Romney by donating $20 million to Romney's super PAC. Romney lost his bid for President of the United States in 2012 to incumbent president Barack Obama. All toll, Adelson is reported to have spent $93 million on the 2012 election.

Sheldon Adelson has found success supporting political causes he believes in. In 2014, he donated $2.5 million to Drug Free Florida Committee and later, another $1.5 million for the NO on 2 campaign in a successful attempt to defeat Florida’s medical marijuana initiative. He also spent heavily supporting conservative candidates for the U.S. Senate in the mid-term election.

In 2016, Sheldon Adelson altered his strategy from backing a candidate for president who most closely adhere to his political ideology to supporting a more mainstream candidate. Reportedly, aids to Adelson have said there will be more scrutiny in selecting candidates who can win elections. This may benefit more well-known candidates who have established records and a “more electable” message..

Charitable Donations
The Adelsons have also given millions of dollars to various charitable organizations, including medical research, addiction clinics and Birthright Israel, an organization that finances tours of Jerusalem for kids. The couple has also donated to the the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, and the Museum of Holocaust Art. Adelson is a member of the board of directors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2007, Sheldon Adelson established the Adelson Family Charitable Trust, which is expected to donate $200 million to Jewish and Israeli causes.

Warren Buffett : Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

Known as the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett is an investment guru and one of the richest and most respected businessmen in the world.

Biography Of Sheldon Adelson

Who Is Warren Buffett?

Born in Nebraska in 1930, Warren Buffett demonstrated keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway. Overseeing the growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy and food and beverage industries, Buffett became one of the world's richest men and a celebrated philanthropist.

Early Life

Businessman and investor. Born Warren Edward Buffett on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father, Howard, worked as stockbroker and served as a U.S. congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy.

Buffett demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early in his childhood. Friends and acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy who could add large columns of numbers in his head, a talent he occasionally demonstrated in his later years.

Warren often visited his father's stockbrokerage shop as a child, and chalked in the stock prices on the blackboard in the office. At 11 years old he made his first investment, buying three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share. The stock quickly dropped to only $27, but Buffett held on tenaciously until they reached $40. He sold his shares at a small profit, but regretted the decision when Cities Service shot up to nearly $200 a share. He later cited this experience as an early lesson in patience in investing.

First Entrepreneurial Venture

By the age of 13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horseracing tip sheet. That same year, he filed his first tax return, claiming his bike as a $35 tax deduction.

In 1942, Buffett's father was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and his family moved to Fredricksburg, Virginia, to be closer to the congressman's new post. Buffett attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., where he continued plotting new ways to make money. During his high school tenure, he and a friend purchased a used pinball machine for $25. They installed it in a barbershop, and within a few months the profits enabled them to buy other machines. Buffett owned machines in three different locations before he sold the business for $1,200.

Higher Education and Early Career 

Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.

Influenced by Benjamin Graham's 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School to study under the acclaimed economist and investor. After earning his master's degree in 1951, he sold securities for Buffett-Falk & Company for three years, then worked for his mentor for two years as an analyst at Graham-Newman Corp. 

In 1956, Buffet formed the firm Buffett Partnership Ltd. in his hometown of Omaha. Utilizing the techniques learned from Graham, he was successful in identifying undervauled companies and became a millionaire. One such enterprise Buffett valued was a textile company named Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in the early 1960s, and by 1965 he had assumed control of the company.

Business Empire

Despite the success of Buffett Partnership, its founder dissolved the firm in 1969 to focus on the development of Berkshire Hathaway. He phased out its textile manufacturing division, instead expanding the company by buying assets in media (The Washington Post), insurance (GEICO) and oil (Exxon). Immensely successful, the "Oracle of Omaha" even managed to spin seemingly poor investments into gold, most notably with his purchase of scandal-plagued Salomon Brothers in 1987. 

Following Berkshire Hathaway's significant investment in Coca-Cola, Buffett became director of the company from 1989 until 2006. He has also served as director of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, Graham Holdings Company and The Gillette Company.

Recent Activity and Philanthropy

In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he would be giving his entire fortune away to charity, committing 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation became the largest act of charitable giving in United States history. In 2010, Buffett and Gates announced they had formed The Giving Pledge campaign to recruit more wealthy individuals for philanthropic causes. 

In 2012, Buffett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He began undergoing radiation treatment in July, and successfully completed his treatment in November. 

The health scare did little to slow the octogenarian, who annually ranks near the top of the Forbes world billionaires list. In February 2013, Buffett purchased H. J. Heinz with private equity group 3G Capital for $28 billion. Later additions to the Berkshire Hathaway stable included battery maker Duracell and Kraft Foods Group, which merged with Heinz in 2015 to form the third-largest food and beverage company in North America.

In 2016, Buffett launched Drive2Vote, a website aimed at encouraging people in his Nebraska community to exercise their right to vote, as well as to assist in registering and driving voters to a polling location if they needed a ride. 

A vocal supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he’d endorsed in 2015, Buffett also challenged the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to meet and share their tax returns. "I will meet him in Omaha or Mar-a-Lago or, he can pick the place, anytime between now and election, he said at an August 1 rally in Omaha. "I'll bring my return, he'll bring his return. We're both under audit. And believe me, nobody's going to stop us from talking about what's on those returns." Trump did not accept the offer, and his refusal to share his returns ultimately did not prevent his election to the presidency in 2016. 

In May 2017, Buffett revealed that he had begun selling some of the approximately 81 million shares he owned in IBM stock, noting that he did not value the company as highly as he did six years earlier. Following another sale in the third quarter, his stake in the company dropped to about 37 million shares. On the flip side, he increased his investment in Apple by 3 percent, and became Bank of America's largest shareholder by exercising warrants for 700 million shares.

Milton Hershey : The Chocolate Inventor

Milton Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, in Derry Township, Pennsylvania, although some sources say he was born in Derry Church,Pennsylvania.

Almost every kid in this country has at one time or another eaten a Hershey chocolate bar. Hershey chocolate has become famous around the world. But did you know that the Hershey chocolate factory is less than one hundred years old? And did you know that the founder of Hershey Chocolate, Milton Hershey, had many failures in business before he started his famous company?

Milton Hershey grew up in the rolling farm country of Pennsylvania. Before he became interested in making chocolate, Milton Hershey trained to become a printer. He worked for a small newspaper at first, and then decided that printing was not the right profession for him.
Thank  Then he got a job at a candy factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a few miles from his home. After working a few years at the candy factory, he decided to open his own little candy business near Philadelphia. His first business had to close down because it was not making money. After closing down his first business, he traveled to Denver, Colorado, to learn how to make caramels.

He took his new skills back to New York and worked selling candies on the street. But this second business also failed.

Finally, Milton Hershey moved back to the farm hills where he grew up. He then experimented with all sorts of different candies and chocolates. The area where he lived had lots and lots of dairy farms, so he had a large and easy supply of fresh milk.

And he could get other supplies, such as sugar, from nearby Philadelphia. By 1893 he was selling a million dollars worth of caramel candy per year. Since his chocolate dipped and his chocolate flavored caramels were the best selling, he decided to make chocolate himself.

By experimenting, Milton Hershey discovered how to make delicious chocolate by using fresh, sweet condensed milk. His milk chocolates were so popular that he sold his caramel factory and focused his business on making chocolate only.

In 1903, the same year the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane at Kitty Hawk, Milton Hershey built a huge chocolate factory and an entire town to go with it. The town of Hershey, Pennsylvania had a streetcar line, schools, library, sports arena, community center and a special school for needy children.

Today, the town of Hershey is still the home of the factory that Milton Hershey built. And if you ever visit, you can smell delicious chocolate smells just by driving through the town.

The factory is not so hard to find. Just travel down Cocoa Avenue until you get to East Chocolate Avenue. Turn right at the traffic light and just follow your nose.

The Past Of Harley Davidson

William S. Harley

Success Tips From Self Made Billionares

William S. Harley was an American entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company.

Synopsis

Born in 1880, William S. Harley took an interest in the early development of the bicycle, which fueled his fascination with mechanics and engineering. With his friend Arthur Davidson, he began outfitting bicycles with a motorized engine. In 1903 Harley, Davidson, and Davidson's two brothers formed the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, soon the world's preeminent motorcycle manufacturer.

Early Years

One of the original founders of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, William Sylvester Harley,  was born December 29, 1880, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ambitious, with a good eye for business, Harley started his career at the age of 15 when he took a job at a bicycle factory.

Working with him was a childhood friend of his, Arthur Davidson, who, like Harley, had a mind for mechanics. The two also shared a deep interest in bicycles and were convinced they could create a new kind of mechanized bike that would be easier to ride. Soon, the two friends began experimenting with gasoline engines and trying them out on their own bikes.

Determined to make a better life for himself, Harley set off for college, the first in his family to do so, and eventually earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1907.

A trained draftsman, Harley returned to Milwaukee after college and began working again with Davidson to fulfill their dream of building a motorized bicycle. They soon enlisted the help of Davidson's two older brothers, Walter, a railroad machinist who gave the young company a skilled mechanic, and William, a tool-room foreman.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company

In 1903 the four men formed the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, which they operated out of a small shed in the Davidson family's backyard. Harley's name was given top billing because he was credited with coming up with the original idea for a motorcycle.

That first year, the company produced three bikes, which included a bike crank and pedals as well as a single-cylinder motor.

Over the next few years, the company refined the motorcycle idea and attracted new business. By 1909, the company had its own factory, employed 35 workers and produced more than a thousand bikes per year.

Behind much of the company's development was Harley, a perfectionist who poured hours into creating the world's first two-cylinder motorcycle engine. He did so in 1907, and within just a few years, his patented V-Twin engine had rocketed the company's growth to an astounding 3,200 bikes a year.

Over the next several decades Harley-Davidson continued to see a major boost in sales and popularity. They also were in-demand from the U.S. military, first ordered during a 1916 skirmish at the Mexican-U.S. border and later in the global conflicts that followed. With the onset of World War I, one third to a half of the company's production were sent to the war effort. During WWII, the American military ordered more than 60,000 Harley-Davidson bikes for the Allies' use overseas. Harley oversaw the deals between the company and the War Department. Post-war and into the 1950s, their motorcycles were the only American brand on the global market.

Up until his death, Harley served as the company's chief engineer and treasurer. He had proved instrumental in the company's success and introduction of new bikes. He was also an avid racer, and had a passion for testing out his new bikes.

Personal Life & Death

Harley married Anna Jachthuber in 1910. They had three children: Ann Mary, William J. and John.

Harley died of heart failure on September 18, 1943 at the age of 62. He is buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery and Mausoleum in Milwaukee. In 1998, he was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Columbus, Ohio.

Life Story Of Jeff Bezos

American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos is the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com and owner of 'The Washington Post.' His successful business ventures have made him one of the richest people in the world.

Also Read Life Story Of George Soros

Who Is Jeff Bezos? 

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos had an early love of computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, a virtual bookstore that became one of the internet's biggest success stories. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal. His successful business ventures have made him one of the richest people in the world. 

Early Life and Career
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. The Jorgensens were married less than a year, and when Bezos was 4 years old his mother re-married, to Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos.

As a child, Jeff Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house. He moved to Miami with his family as a teenager, where he developed a love for computers and graduated valedictorian of his high school. It was during high school that he started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders.

Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, he found work at several firms on Wall Street, including Fitel, Bankers Trust and the investment firm D.E. Shaw. It was there he met his wife, Mackenzie, and became the company's youngest vice president in 1990. 

While his career in finance was extremely lucrative, Bezos chose to make a risky move into the nascent world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to Seattle and targeted the untapped potential of the internet market by opening an online bookstore.

Launching Amazon.com
Bezos set up the office for his fledgling company in his garage where, along with a few employees, he began developing software. They expanded operations into a two-bedroom house, equipped with three Sun Microstations, and eventually developed a test site. After inviting 300 friends to beta test the site, Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American River, on July 16, 1995.

The initial success of the company was meteoric. With no press promotion, Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days. In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week, growing faster than Bezos and his start-up team had envisioned. 

Amazon.com went public in 1997, leading many market analysts to question whether the company could hold its own when traditional retailers launched their own e-commerce sites. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up, but also outpaced competitors, becoming an e-commerce leader.

Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. While many dot.coms of the early '90s went bust, Amazon flourished with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011.

In 2006, Amazon.com launched its video on demand service; initially known as Amazon Unbox on TiVo, it was eventually rebranded as Amazon Instant Video. In 2007, the company released the Kindle, a handheld digital book reader that allowed users to buy, download, read and store their book selections. That same year, Bezos announced his investment in Blue Origin, a Seattle-based aerospace company that develops technologies to offer space travel to paying customers.

Bezos entered Amazon into the tablet marketplace with the unveiling of the Kindle Fire in 2011. The following September, he announced the new Kindle Fire HD, the company's next generation tablet designed to give Apple's iPad a run for its money. "We haven't built the best tablet at a certain price. We have built the best tablet at any price," Bezos said, according to ABC News.

Buying 'The Washington Post'
Bezos made headlines worldwide on August 5, 2013, when he purchased The Washington Post and other publications affiliated with its parent company, The Washington Post Co., for $250 million. The deal marked the end of the four-generation reign over The Post Co. by the Graham family, which included Donald E. Graham, the company's chairman and chief executive, and his niece, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth.

"The Post could have survived under the company's ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future," Graham stated, in an effort to explain the transaction. "But we wanted to do more than survive. I'm not saying this guarantees success, but it gives us a much greater chance of success."

In a statement to Post employees on August 5, Bezos wrote: "The values of The Post do not need changing. ...There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That's essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about—government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports—and working backwards from there. I'm excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

Biography Of Henry Ford

Henry Ford (1863–1947) was an industrialist who changed the face of automobile manufacture in America, becoming the epitome of American Capitalism. He lent his name to ‘Fordism’ – efficient mass production.

Early Life : 

Henry Ford was born in 1863 on a farm in rural Michigan,  near Detroit. From an early age, he expressed an interest in mechanical devices. He was given a pocket watch at the age of 15, and he developed a reputation for being an experienced watchmaker.

Shortly after his mother passed away, Henry left the family farm to seek employment in Detroit. He worked his way up to becoming an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. By 1893 he had become chief engineer and gained the recognition and encouragement of Thomas Edison. Henry Ford retained a deep affection for Thomas Edison throughout his life.

It was working as chief engineer at Edison’s that he was able to work on a petrol drive quadricycle. His testing was successful, and this enabled him to develop the quadricycle into a small car; this proved the basis for the famous Model T motor car introduced in 1908. The Ford Motor company was formed in 1903 with the backing of $28,000 from various investors.

Working And Practices : 

Henry Ford astonished the industrial world by offering a daily wage of $5 a day. Even by today’s prices that was a very good salary. This wage was far above what anywhere else offered. At a stroke, it solved the problem of labour turnover and encouraged the best workers to come and work for Ford. Through paying high wages, Ford was able to encourage the highest level of labour productivity. Although many criticised his seemingly over generous pay, he also pointed out, that the high wage helped the workers to be able to afford the cars they were making.

However, Henry Ford was hostile to the role of trades unions. For a long time, he battled against the trades unions, refusing to have anything to do them. However, by 1941, with the workers on strike, his wife encouraged him to capitulate to the United Auto Workers (UAW).

It was Henry Ford who also revolutionised the production line processes. He helped to develop the assembly line method of production and was always seeking to cut costs. Although he did not ‘invent’ the assembly line, he did make one of the most successful commercial applications of its potential. This led to his decision to give customers any colour they choose so long as it was black.

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” – My Life and Work (1922) Chapter IV, p. 71

 The motive for insisting on black was because black was the quickest colour to dry and therefore the cheapest.

The impact of the assembly line was to help reduce the cost of the Model T motor car. It helped Ford become the dominant firm in the motor car industry. An estimation from 1932 suggested Ford was producing 33% of the world’s automobile production.

Henry Ford had a dislike of war. He helped to fund a peace ship to Europe in 1915 and spoke out against the ‘vague financiers who encourage war’. He never really got involved in the Second World War effort, though he allowed other officials in the Ford company to transform Ford into one of the biggest military plane builders in the war.

Henry Ford also subscribed to various anti-semitic pamphlets. Although he later apologised for some of his anti-semitic views, Adolf Hitler admired Henry Ford. Ford is the only foreigner mentioned in Mein Kampf. Hitler wanted Volkswagen to mirror the production techniques and philosophy of Ford Motor company.

Henry Ford was also noted for some of his inspirational self-improvement quotes – emphasising hard work and self-sufficiency.

“You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.”

As quoted in Wisdom & Inspiration for the Spirit and Soul (2004) by Nancy Toussaint, p. 85

Towards the end of his life, he spent considerable time with his friend Thomas Edison, who moved into West Orange, New Jersey.

Life Story Of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein's name has become synonymous with genius but his contributions to science might have been cut short had he stayed in Germany, where he was born on March 14, 1879.

It was 1933 and a charismatic politician called Adolf Hitler had just become Chancellor.

Einstein, a Jew, learned that his name was on a Nazi list of people earmarked for assassination and a bounty had been put on his head.

One German magazine even included him on a list of enemies of the state under the phrase: “Not yet hanged.”

He had already been used to being something of a migrant as, by the age of 17, his parents had already taken him to live in Italy and Switzerland, where he began training to be a physics and maths teacher in 1896.

Einstein qualified and became a Swiss citizen but couldn’t find a teaching job so began work as an assistant in the Swiss Patent Office in 1901, where he was passed over for promotion because he had not got to grips with “machine technology”.

However, much of his work was linked to the synchronising of time by mechanical and electrical means, which sowed the seeds that would later transform the understanding of the universe.

His first theoretical paper – on the capillary forces of a straw – was published in a respected journal that same year and by 1905 he was awarded his doctorate by the University of Zurich.

The scientist’s work began to pour out of him – by the end of that year, he published no less than four revolutionary papers on matter and energy; the photoelectric effect; Brownian motion; and the idea that perhaps defined him most of all – special relativity.

Despite the acclaim that he began to accrue, he continued working at the patent office until 1909.

Two years later his work on relativity made him world famous when he concluded that the trajectory of light arriving on Earth from a star would be bent by the gravity of the Sun.

His conclusions ripped up the ideas of Newtonian mechanics which had stood since the 17th century.

They are modest, intelligent, considerate and have a feel for art. [Einstein on the Japanese]

He returned to Germany where he held several prestigious positions, including president of the German Physical Society.

By 1921, his groundbreaking theories had transformed the basics of modern physics and he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

However, it was not given for his most famous work, that of relativity, because it remained too controversial.

Instead, the judges used his explanation of the photoelectric effect to explain the award.

The famous scientist began to lecture worldwide and travelled to Singapore, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Japan, where he spoke before the emperor and declared: “Of all the people I have met, I like the Japanese most, as they are modest, intelligent, considerate and have a feel for art.”

Wherever he went by this stage he was greeted like a head of state or a rock star, with crowds thronging to hear him and cannons fired to salute his arrival.

The rise of Hitler and Nazism persuaded him to move to the US, where he later shed his avowal of pacifism and wrote to President Roosevelt urging him to press ahead with construction of a nuclear bomb to ensure the Germans did not get there first.

There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn. [Robert Oppenheimer on Einstein]

He later said this letter was his life’s biggest regret because nuclear weapons had such a fierce capacity for destruction.

He began work at Princeton University and became a US citizen in 1940 (his third passport) where he was a strident critic of racism, calling it America’s “worst disease”.

Albert Einstein died of internal bleeding on April 17, 1955, aged 76, which was marked with headlines around the world.

But his story did not end there - his brain was removed by the pathologist to try to understand what made him so intelligent.

At his memorial, Robert Oppenheimer, the developer of the atomic bomb which Einstein had backed, said: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness.

“There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”