Do You Know the Origins of These Famous Companies?

Best Buy opened in 1966 as Sound of Music. In 1981, a Minnesota location was hit by a tornado, and the showroom was destroyed but the storeroom remained intact. The store subsequently had a “tornado sale,” advertising the “best buys” on everything. After the sale raked in huge profits, the company was renamed Best Buy in 1983.

Though it’s known today for its cellphones, Nokia has been around since 1865. Back in the 19th century, Nokia began a paper mill, later producing rubber boots and tires. Its transition into telecommunications came in the 1990s, and by 1998, Nokia was the bestselling mobile phone brand in the world.

Hasbro actually began in the textile industry in 1923, founded by brothers Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld. They pivoted into school supplies later that decade, reaching annual sales of $500,000 for their pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches. In 1935, they got into the pencil business, and began manufacturing toys on the side that same decade.

Today, Coleco is best known for inventing the ColecoVision video game system, but it was originally a leather company. In fact, the name is a combination of the first letters in "Connecticut Leather Company," which is what it was called when it was first founded in 1932. In 1954, Coleco won a toy award for its leather moccasin kit, which prompted it to enter the toy market in full force. In 1988, the temporary decline of the video game industry forced Coleco into bankruptcy.

In 1927, J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice opened an A&W root beer stand in Washington, D.C. Soon, they added food to the franchise's menu and renamed it "Hot Shoppes," opening more locations within a few years. For 30 more years, Hot Shoppes was successful until the Marriotts made a shift to the hotel business in 1957, opening the world's first motor hotel in Arlington, Virginia.

When 3M began in 1902, it was called the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, and its goal was to dig up the mineral corundum, which includes rubies and sapphires. The company's founders made a mistake, however, and what they thought was corundum was actually a low-grade mineral called anorthosite. Forced to pivot, 3M made nimble transitions part of their brand. Today, they're the company behind Scotch Tape, Command Strips, and Post-it Notes.

In 1909, Michio Suzuki founded the Suzuki Loom Works in Hamamatsu, Japan. Nine years later, Sakichi Toyoda invented the world's first automatic loom and began his company, Toyota. The company would pivot from textile equipment to cars in the late 1930s, and Suzuki would follow with a motorcycle in the 1950s.

Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton created Coca-Cola in 1886, claiming it served as a healing tonic for most common ailments. Originally the drink contained cocaine, though that ingredient was removed in 1903. Pemberton sold the syrup to local soda fountains, as it became wildly successful in the Atlanta market, and eventually all across the globe.

When founding his online bookshop in the early 1990s, Jeff Bezos wanted to name it "Cadabra," but the company's first lawyer convinced him it sounded too much like "cadaver." His second choice was "Relentless," but his friends suggested that it sounded a bit sinister. So, Bezos settled on Amazon, invoking the massive river's depth and volume. Relentless.com does still redirect to Amazon, though.

Fusajiro Yamauchi opened his first Nintendo playing card shop in 1889 in the Japanese city of Kyoto. The cards, which were known as Hanafuda, were not traditional decks but were handmade floral cards divided into 12 suits. The company would produce those into the 1960s when they fell out of favor; Nintendo pivoted to toys and arcade games and, finally, in the late 1970s, video games.

In the late 1800s, William Wrigley took over his father's soap business and mastered the marketing technique of giving away a free incentive with the main product. For a while, he gave away umbrellas and then sold baking powder with free sticks of chewing gum. Shortly thereafter, the gum became more popular than baking powder, and Wrigley pivoted his whole company.

Blue Ribbon Sports was founded in 1964 by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, but it would be 14 years before they rebranded to the name they're known by today. Nike was named for the Greek goddess of victory, and that moniker has proven true: the company is now the largest and most-recognized sportswear brand in the world.

As their web search company grew in popularity, founders Jerry Yang and David Filo decided that Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web was simply too long a name. So, they changed it to Yahoo!, an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle." One year later, the brand was incorporated and began its short reign as the king of internet companies.

American Express was founded in 1850 through the consolidation of three companies that specialized in the express transportation of goods by train in New York and the Midwest. For 30 years, the company grew to become one of the country's largest delivery networks. After that, it introduced innovations like money orders and travelers cheques, and became one of the largest credit card companies in the world.

The first automobile Henry Ford ever designed and drove was unveiled on June 4, 1896, and was named the Quadricycle. Featuring a light metal frame with four bicycle wheels and a buggy bench seat, the vehicle was powered by a two-cylinder, four-horsepower gasoline engine. Though it didn’t have a steering wheel, brakes, or reverse gear, the early car started one of the world's biggest companies.

In the 1940s, Mike Bell opened up a hot dog stand called Bell’s Drive-In. When he sold that stand in 1952, he made an even bigger stand that sold both hot dogs and hamburgers. Due to increased competition, Bell began to experiment with Mexican food. The result was a huge success, and Bell rebranded as Taco Bell in 1962.

To transport illegal alcohol during the Prohibition era, bootleggers had to get creative — and drive fast to outrun the police. Souped-up engines were put into ordinary cars to boost speed and help rum-runners evade the authorities and deliver moonshine around the country. After Prohibition ended, drivers still wanted to use their fast cars, so they raced them against each other, and NASCAR was born.

The year was 1996, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin had just created the first version of their search engine on the servers of Stanford University. The engine worked by analyzing the web's backlinks to understand how valuable a website was, and cataloged the internet based on that. Because of those backlinks, the product was temporarily called BackRub until “Google,” inspired by “googolplex,” was suggested as a much better alternative one year later.

One day in 1893, Caleb Bradham, the owner of a drug store in North Carolina, mixed sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, nutmeg, and other additives into a beverage he called "Brad's Drink." The concoction became a local sensation, and within five years, Bradham was ready to expand his business. He changed its name to Pepsi-Cola to suggest it would help indigestion, as it comes from the word "dyspepsia."

In 1903, James L. Kraft began selling cheese out of the back of a wagon as he drove around the streets of Chicago going door-to-door. Three years later, the Krafts began processing cheese for distribution. They later patented a spoil-resistant processed cheese which launched them to success. In 2015, the company merged with Heinz to create the fifth-largest food and drink company in the world.