The Best Idea Yet

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When Johnny Carson, 1970s late-night king, declared he wanted another day off, it left NBC with a hole in their weekend lineup. 11:30pm Saturday night wasn’t exactly the hot time slot… so the network recruited a quiet...

In postwar Tokyo, two engineers were tinkering with rice cookers and busted home radios when they stumbled across a new kind of audio technology: magnetic tape. It inspired them to create a range of ahead-of-their-time...

When Jane Birkin's boyfriend ran over her beloved wicker basket, she was stuck lugging a messy tote onto a flight to London. As her Hermès planner exploded across the first-class cabin, her mortified seatmate suggested...

In the spring of 1903, the NYC subway wasn’t yet open… the Wright Brothers hadn’t yet taken their epic flight… and the New York Yankees were not yet the Yankees. They were the Highlanders: a group of unremarkable...

It started with a souped-up bicycle inspired by a vaudeville show, and the need for speed. The dream – shared by four Harley brothers and one Davidson – came true, and became one of America’s most iconic companies. But...

Who wouldn’t want to visit the happiest place on Earth? Well — at the start of the 1950s, it seemed like no one did, at least not when Walt Disney pitched the idea. Sure, Walt had revolutionized animation with Steamboat...

It’s postwar Japan, and entrepreneur Momofuku Ando has lost everything—his business, his home, and his savings. In fact, the whole country has been ravaged by air raids, and people are hungry. But when he stops at a...

A wounded Irish soldier crawls from a blood-soaked battlefield in the French countryside. He survives, but his fighting days are over. So he settles in the Cognac region, and in 1765, starts a modest brandy business...

Imagine yourself on a sandy SoCal beach, surfboard in hand. But the ocean’s too calm: not a single wave in sight. What do you do? Well, if you’re a kid in the early 60s, you throw some wheels on a plank of wood and go...

What do you get when you mix a passion for collecting bugs with an obsession for video games? For Satoshi Tajiri, the answer is the world's largest media franchise (over $92 billion revenue — more than Star Wars and...

André and Édouard Michelin were desperately seeking a way to save their family rubber business, when a hapless cyclist with a flat came staggering into their workshop. The brothers saw an opportunity…a revolutionary...

What do you do for fun if you’re a bored college kid? For students across New England in the early 1900s, the answer was simple: toss around empty pie tins (obviously). Soon, shouts of “Frisbee!” echoed across campus...

In 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda badly needed a vacation. He’d just won the Tony for his musical “In The Heights,” he’d been going nonstop. So he took a break, bringing a book with him for poolside lounging: the 800-page...

Born in a sweltering Texas drugstore in 1885 - this indescribable, 23 (secret) ingredient concoction broke the first rule of marketing: never sell something you can't explain. Behind this mystery brew was Charles...

Enzo Ferrari was 10 years old when he fell in love with racing… and soon, he would make it his life’s mission. After almost dying in an infirmary during WWI, Enzo schmoozed his way into the driving world. He built an...

Beanie Babies — the unassuming critters with birthdates and bios — are designed to tug on your heartstrings (and your wallet). But for a moment in the late-90s, they burst out of gift shops and into investment...

Tommy Bahama (spoiler) wasn’t founded by a man named Thomas with a Caribbean address. Rather, this classic lifestyle brand began with two longtime friends and coworkers at a failing apparel company. Facing unemployment...

When entrepreneur Henry J. Heinz went bankrupt after his first venture, he nearly lost it all—his farmland, his parents' home, and his own reputation. But then, he launched a stunning comeback that changed everything...

This sexy seltzer started out more than 40 years ago as a Wisconsin brewery’s quiet, nonalcoholic spinoff. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, LaCroix remained the low-key, low-cal fave of Midwestern Little League coaches...

When out-of-work coder Jens Rasmussen couldn’t find directions to a cafe in Copenhagen, he wound up changing navigation forever. Alongside his brother Lars (also an out-of-work coder), Jens developed a radical...

In a high-end boutique between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor met as fashion-obsessed shopgirls with dreams of entrepreneurship. But they had no obvious path to get there… until...

The cream-topped, dome-lidded Frappuccino is the caffeinated crown jewel of the Starbucks empire. It helped the company break out from regional coffee chain to global lifestyle brand, made cold drinks into 75% of...

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were just trying to get work. These two broke illustrators were scraping by on side hustles and instant ramen… until, one fateful night, Kevin drew a doodle to get Peter to laugh: a...

Lonnie Johnson was already a brilliant Air Force engineer working on cutting edge, planet-saving inventions…when a surprise bathroom discovery (we’ve all been there) sparked an idea that changed water fights forever...