Some names are too great not to be used

Was JC Penney a real person? 10 names turned into successful brands

Let’s face it, some people have better-sounding names than others. And some of them have the nerve and the pride to slap their own name on their products. A sign of trust, you might say. Sure, everybody knows who Henry Ford is. But what about Glen Bell Jr or James Cash Penney? Take a look at the following brands and discover the people brave enough to give their companies their names.

Let us start the list with a name that is immersed in the world of soups (pun intended). The Knorr brand was founded by Carl Heinrich Knorr in 1838, and it didn’t start in the line of business it is today. First, he supplied chicory to the coffee industry. After that, the founder began experimenting with drying vegetables and seasonings, which led to the launch of the first dried soups across Continental Europe in 1873.

This legendary motorcycle company was founded by two childhood friends, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson, who began working on a small-engine model in the early 1900s, leading to the creation of the company we know today.

Later on, 2 more Davidsons, William and Walter, joined the venture. The company developed quickly, and in 1903, it began selling motorcycles on a very limited basis.

Some names just sound too cool not to do anything with them. For example, this clothing label was founded by professional tennis player Fred Perry. It all started in the late 1940s, when he and Tibby Wegner, an Austrian footballer, created the first sweatband. Later, Perry and Wegner created their version of a tennis shirt. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Naming a business after yourself is a common practice in the high-fashion industry. And Alexander McQueen is no exception. He was a London-based, English designer who used to work as the head designer of the Givenchy fashion line.

In 2004, he started his menswear line. In his early years, he worked in a tailor shop that created theater costumes, and he used many of the ideas he learned there in his future collections.

A bouncy-sounding name like Boeing didn’t exactly seem destined for a great future in the aviation industry, but it was. In the early years, William Boeing didn’t work in aviation but sold timber. During the exposition in Seattle in 1909, he saw a manned flying machine for the first time and became interested in the concept.

Seven years later, he went into business with engineer George Conrad Westervelt and founded the Pacific Aero Products Co. The company’s name was changed to Boeing Airplane Company the following year. In the beginning, Boeing aircraft only transported mail, but that changed soon.

Just like Knorr, Lipton is a name forever linked to a product, but it wasn’t always like that. Before he got involved in the tea trade, Sir Thomas Lipton had worked as an accountant, a door-to-door salesman, and a grocery assistant. After gaining experience, he opened his first provision shop and later established a chain of groceries. Then he focused his efforts on tea.

According to Sir Lipton, his secret to success was selling the best goods at the lowest prices, harnessing the power of advertising, and always being optimistic.

Just like in the case of Harley-Davidson, Baskin-Robbins is a brand formed by the names of its two founders: Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins, who were brothers-in-law.

Irv started Snowbird Ice Cream, and Burt launched Burton Ice Cream Shop. Both were successful. And when the number of stores grew, they decided to drop the separate identities, and all the stores became Baskin-Robbins.

Sometimes it's harder to picture a person behind the brand name if the name is also a common word. But it happens. Taco Bell is named after its founder, entrepreneur Glen Bell Jr, who launched a drive-in after seeing the success of McDonald’s.

Bell saw that there was room for growth beyond burgers and launched several successful taco drive-ins and restaurants with other partners before launching Taco Bell in 1962.

And moving on from Taco Bell, we must now talk about those who inspired him. Their story is the basis for the 2016 movie The Founder (a great watch, and a hypnotizing performance by Michael Keaton), and it started when brothers Dick and Mac McDonald decided to make a burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

The company as we know it today was founded by Raymond Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman who was so impressed by their burger restaurant that he became their agent and set up franchises around the US. Years later, he bought the rights to the McDonald's name.

Just like with the Fred Perry case, it would have been a shame for a name as great as JC Penney to end up nowhere. The real James Cash Penney was born in Hamilton, Missouri, and opened a retail store on April 14, 1902, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

In 1909, Penney moved his company headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, to be closer to banks and railroads. By 1912, Penney had 34 stores in the Rocky Mountain States. In 1913, all stores were consolidated under the J. C. Penney banner we know today.

Have an apple

11 Common medical misconceptions you probably once believed

Image: Nikolai Chernichenko

Medicine is complicated, and it's easy for folklore, memes, and half-remembered advice to creep their way into our collective subconscious. Some of these myths are harmless, others are misleading, and many are downright dangerous. Let's take a look at 11 medical misconceptions that have endured over time, and that you've probably believed at one time or another.

Image: Isabella Fischer

..keeps the doctor away, right? Apples are healthy. They are full of fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants. But, as you probably know, they aren't enough to ward off disease on their own. The phrase originated in 19th-century Wales as "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread." The rhyme is charming, but fortunately, doctors still get plenty of bread.

Image: Kotagauni Srinivas

That satisfying pop comes from collapsing gas bubbles in the fluid of your joints, not from your bones grinding to dust. Decades of peer-reviewed research show no link between knuckle-cracking and arthritis or bone deterioration. It might be irritating for those around you, but not bad for your joints.

Image: Guus Baggermans

It does feel that way, but it's only an optical illusion: the new growth feels blunt and coarse when compared to a tapered hair tip. However, the follicles themselves are unaffected by shaving. Your hair’s growth rate and thickness are determined by genetics.

Image: Andra C Taylor Jr

This one is nothing more than a parental scare-tactic propaganda. Gum is indeed indigestible, but it doesn’t remain trapped inside you forever. It passes through your digestive tract quite efficiently, just like corn or sunflower seeds. Certainly in days, not 7 years.

Image: Angelo Casto

Although carrots are good for overall eye health, the myth that they have the power to give you night vision stems from a little bit of British World War II propaganda. The British Royal Air Force claimed that their pilots had uncannily good night accuracy because of their carrot-heavy diets. In reality, it was a cover story to conceal their use of radar technology.

Image: Tobias Oetiker

Neither black coffee nor cold showers can accelerate the rate at which your body metabolizes alcohol. Ask any doctor for a recipe to sober up quickly, and they will tell you the sad, sad truth: it's impossible.

Plenty of people claim to have found a trick to solve this problem. However, no matter how many freezing showers you take, they will only make you cold, wet, and awake, but still drunk.

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Well, it depends on who you ask. There’s a long list of home remedies: hold your breath, drink water upside down, have a friend scare you, and so on. While some of these techniques might help by resetting your diaphragm, the truth is that most hiccups fade on their own within minutes. And if they don’t, you’re better off seeing a doctor than cycling through an endless number of folk cures.

Image: Alfred Quartey

In reality, apple seeds contain amygdalin, which the body can convert into toxic cyanide (not arsenic). However, the amount of amygdalin in apple seeds is tiny: you would need to crush and eat over 150 apple seeds to get anything close to a dangerous dose. Or you could simply avoid eating the seeds altogether.

In any case, apples are far better at keeping the doctor away than they are at poisoning you.

Image: Chris Slupski

If you do, you'll catch a cold. Or that's what this myth would have us believe. In fact, wet hair in chilly weather will just make you uncomfortable.

As we know, colds are caused by viruses that get into our systems. Being cold or damp doesn't conjure viruses out of thin air. That being said, lowering your body's temperature might weaken your immune defenses slightly, but the real culprits are still unequivocally the germs.

Image: Shubham Dhage

A Hollywood myth that has crawled deep into our collective imagination. While the exact origin of the phrase is unclear, it is often associated with the lectures of Harvard psychologist William James, who told audiences that we only tap a fraction of our full potential during the 1890s. The idea then evolved and spread through self-help and motivational literature, eventually becoming the widely believed claim we know today.

Scientific research has thoroughly debunked this notion. While the inner workings of much of our brain are still unknown to us, we do know that virtually all of it has a function, and we use 100% of it.

Image: Megan Watson

A Thanksgiving classic, people like to blame their festive drowsiness on the turkey. There is some scientific basis for this: turkey does contain tryptophan, an amino acid that promotes sleep.

However, the amount in turkey is minimal and no greater than that found in chicken or beef. The real culprits behind your post-dinner nap are the carb overload, extra drinks, and day-long festivities—not the turkey itself.