Macy’s doesn’t own its flagship location because of the 'million dollar corner'

As of 2024, Macy’s wanted to monetize its store closures through real estate deals

In a 2024 earnings call, Macy’s noted that while it’s remodeling and investing in some of its brick-and-mortar locations, it seeks to shutter other stores in lower-performing locations. It’s estimated that Macy's will close 150 locations through 2026.

Watch a video that details the full history of Macy's

From the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to opening its flagship store in Herald Square, Macy's has a long and successful history despite its recent financial troubles.

One odd Macy’s location is basically a museum

Here’s a list of things you wouldn’t expect to see at your average Macy’s store: a 19th-century French painting, a former midcentury children’s barbershop, nautical portholes, and the list goes on. Shoppers can find all those things and more in one unique Macy’s store in Pasadena, California.

A Nantucket woman helped build Macy’s

Margaret Getchell, an early Macy’s superintendent, was among the first female executives in the American retail industry. Getchell (who was distantly related to Macy’s founder RH Macy, although it’s unclear if the pair knew that when she was hired) helped shape Macy's as an early employee.

The Times Square New Year's celebration originated as a party for The New York Times

The paper moved to the area, originally called Longacre Square, in 1904 and lobbied the city to rename it after the publication. The paper’s publisher, Alfred Ochs, threw a massive all-day party on New Year’s Eve to celebrate the opening of the paper’s headquarters, establishing the location as a destination for the holiday.

A Manhattan building doomed to collapse was saved in secret

After completing the Citicorp Center, its engineer realized that cost-cutting measures to use bolted instead of welded joints made the building vulnerable to collapse under quartering winds. For three months, crews worked in secret at night to reinforce the building under Project Serene.

The billion-dollar ghost town in Baltimore

As a Rust Belt city looking to revitalize its economic core, Baltimore, Maryland, sought big investments from developers and municipalities. The so-called Baltimore Peninsula is a billion-dollar neighborhood in south Baltimore initially prompted by the investment of Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank. In 2025, the glossy, grand urban neighborhood is still empty, with fully-built condos and retail spaces.

Internet domain names can be worth millions of dollars

And yet, the mysterious man who owns Milk.com likely isn't selling his valuable site any time soon.

Mark Zuckerberg was nearly fired from his own company after refusing to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1B

In 2006, Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1B. Despite enthusiasm from nearly all of Facebook's management team and board (which included PayPal cofounder and famed investor Peter Thiel at the time), then 22-year-old Zuckerberg turned down the offer, insisting that Yahoo undervalued the company and didn't have a clear vision for the future. Zuckerberg has since said he regrets not being clear about his intentions to grow the company with his team before the Yahoo bid, as almost all of the company's management team left after he turned down the offer.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City’s Financial District in 2001, many banks decided to relocate

Much has been said about why today’s top banks are typically no longer headquartered on Wall Street itself. The terrorist attacks in New York City’s Financial District on Sept. 11, 2001, are one reason many banks decided to relocate.

Tiffany & Co. was among LVMH's most expensive—and complex—acquisitions

Three years after LVMH acquired Tiffany in 2021 for $15.8B, the jeweler's profits doubled to over $1B per year.

Madison Square Garden and Madison Avenue are indirectly named after James Madison

Madison Square Park was named for James Madison in the 1800s. Madison Avenue later took its name from the park, and Madison Square Garden was named after Madison Square, indirectly linking both landmarks to Madison.

Data center companies are worsening housing undersupply in some regional markets

With large capital to spend, technology giants have disrupted the real estate market, driving up prices by outbidding commercial and residential developers and intensifying competition for available land. A property purchased over several years for $50M in Prince William County, Virginia, was sold to Amazon for $700M in 2025.

Family Dollar and Dollar Tree merged in 2015 before splitting in 2025

Dollar Tree completed its acquisition of Family Dollar for about $9B in 2015. However, in 2025, Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar to private equity firms Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management for just over $1B after Family Dollar lagged in performance.

One New Yorker saved $1,600 during her 'no-buy January'

A social trend in recent years encourages participants to buy essentials only for the month (an abbreviation of the even more radical no-buy year). Hannah Marder gave the fast a go, fastidiously dividing her purchases into wants and needs and managing to save roughly $1,600 over the month.

Why Americans keep buying McMansions

Some argue that McMansions—large, relatively newly built, amenity-filled, cookie-cutter homes—are ugly. Others say they're just not a good investment. And yet Americans continue buying them. This video explores why McMansions are still popular despite these criticisms, and how these homes got their start in the first place. Watch the video here.

American Express briefly owned Lehman Brothers

In 1984, Shearson, a retail banking company and American Express subsidiary, bought the investment banking company Lehman Brothers—best known for its historic 2008 collapse—for $360M. The businesses were then called Shearson Lehman/American Express. American Express spun off Lehman Brothers with an IPO in 1994 that attracted nearly $3B in new capital.

With the advent of charge cards, Estée Lauder fought to get her products in department stores to benefit from impulse purchases

Because Estée Lauder focused on personal relationships and demonstrations as one of her primary sales strategies, getting her product in front of enough people was an early struggle. Similarly, many customers wanted to buy her products, but didn't always have the cash on hand. One of her biggest accomplishments was earning a retail spot at Saks on 5th Ave in Manhattan, which paved the way for her brand to become a household name and gave customers more flexibility to make purchases on the spot.

Apple’s '1984' ad aired once during the game and permanently shaped their advertising

During Super Bowl XVIII, Apple aired its dystopian “1984” commercial once to a mass audience, introducing the Macintosh and positioning Apple as a challenger to IBM’s dominance in personal computing.

A reclusive billionaire ran Sears before its bankruptcy

Former Sears CEO and hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was once kidnapped from his home in Greenwich, Connecticut by criminals looking to get rich. Some argue that the incident colored Sears’ history.

Broadway grosses over $1B annually

The famous but relatively small geographic area is responsible for a relatively enormous economy, thanks to high demand and high ticket prices.

See the small apartment WeWork founder Adam Neumann lived in before he was a billionaire

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann used to share a relatively small apartment in New York City with his wife before he became a billionaire off of WeWork. At one point, the apartment rented for $3K per month.

Nike made retailers pay for Air Jordans upfront to guarantee stock

Instead of paying for the inventory sold, Knight locked retailers into iron-clad agreements, where the companies would pay upfront for Nike inventory (but at a 7% discount). Knight did this to leverage debt, allowing retailers a better chance at getting the wildly popular Air Jordans.

The Compromise of 1790 broke a deadlock over debt and the national capital

In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson reached an agreement that allowed Congress to assume the states' war debts and to approve a permanent national capital on the Potomac River.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

The macula is a small area in the center of the retina

This part of the eye—roughly the bullseye of the back of the eye—is responsible for processing the central vision of the eye. Degradation of the macula, formally called macular degeneration, leads to symptoms including blurred vision, the need for brighter lighting, and difficulty recognizing faces. The condition doesn't affect peripheral vision, but if you lose central vision, you can still be considered blind.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'