John D. Rockefeller’s father had a nefarious past

John D. Rockefeller’s father was a well-known con artist

John D. Rockefeller was born to a man known as “Devil Bill” who made a living posing as a traveling doctor and selling fake herbal cures, and was also infamous for his storytelling and cons.

How John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire

From a young age, John D. Rockefeller knew he was interested in business. He worked as a bookkeeper and sold candy prior to starting the business empire that would help cement the Rockefeller name in history: Standard Oil.

A timeline of the Rockefeller family

The Rockefeller family timeline (as it relates to the business world, at least) starts in 1839 with John D. Rockefeller’s birth. In the nearly 200 years since, his offspring have gotten involved in everything from the Watergate scandal to the McCormick & Company spice business.

Today’s Rockefellers have become climate activists

The Rockefeller Family Fund has been engaged in more than 40 lawsuits against ExxonMobil, a company that John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil created.

Standard Oil's predatory business practices included temporarily operating at a loss to drive competitors out of business

Rockefeller's oil monopoly had a dark side, including cutting oil prices so low that Standard Oil was sometimes temporarily operating at a loss in order to drive competitors out of business.

The Rockefellers funded the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg

John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife spent millions of dollars restoring Colonial Williamsburg and turning it into the tourist attraction it is today. You can go back in time via video footage from before and after the restoration.

'If you want to succeed, you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.'

- Billionaire John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

In 1931-32, JP Morgan Jr. paid no income taxes due to his company’s losses

This legally reduced his taxable income under existing laws. Similarly, the Rockefellers leveraged charitable foundations to minimize taxes, allowing them to preserve wealth while directing funds to their preferred causes.

Soybean oil fraud almost decimated American Express in 1963

A New York commodities trader who had defrauded the American government over uninspected meat for school lunches, Anthony "Tino" De Angelis, used American Express warehouses to sell soybean oil. However, Angelis had actually filled the tanks with water and placed just enough soybean oil on top of the tanks to pass inspection. American Express was liable for many of the tanks and its stock faced a huge downturn, opening the door for a then 33-year-old Warren Buffett to make his first purchase in the company.

The story of the Sackler empire behind highly addictive OxyContin

This investigative report examines how the Sackler family built its fortune through Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin, a highly addictive painkiller. Through 2017, the drug had generated more than $30B in sales for Purdue Pharma, controlled by the Sacklers.

Rockwell worked with psychoanalyst Erik Erikson

In 1953, the painter and his family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to be closer to the Austen Riggs Center, where his wife was undergoing treatment for alcoholism and depression. Rockwell began treatment, too, working with Erikson—famous for coining the term “identity crisis”—on his anxieties about his art.

Diego Rivera hid a tiny image of Vladimir Lenin in Rockefeller Center

Nelson Rockefeller commissioned painter Diego Rivera to paint a mural for the entrance of the Rockefeller Center. Allegedly in response to criticism that he had “sold out,” Rivera slipped in a painting of Vladimir Lenin.

Jeff Bezos’ grandfather made his own needles by hand for the cattle on his ranch

Jeff Bezos’ mother gave birth to him at 17 years old, and his grandfather was very involved in his life. Bezos spent much of his childhood helping out on his grandfather’s ranch, for instance. In this short clip, Bezos shares some of his thoughts on his family members and his early years of life.

'Rocky Road' was designed to help people cope with the stock market crash

In 1929, ice cream maker William Dreyer marketed Rocky Road as a sweet treat intended to distract consumers from the poor state of the economy. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

DJ Alan Freed was eventually charged in a 'payola' scandal

After popularizing rock 'n' roll, both as a genre and as a culture, Freed became an industry power player, producing movies, hosting concerts, and minting superstars. By the end of the 50's, Freed was charged with 26 counts of commercial bribery, for a scheme they called "payola," and investigated by the House subcommittee on Legislative Oversight.

Listen to the details of Henry Ford's widely speculated affair and secret child

Henry Ford married Clara Bryant in 1888, but is widely rumored to have had a longstanding affair with Evangeline Cote Dahlinger—with whom he's believed to have had a secret child named John. Allegedly, Henry Ford had the manager of Ford Farms, Ray Dahlinger, marry Evangeline and raise their son, John Dahlinger, to protect his reputation. Later in life, John Dahlinger wrote that Henry Ford was his real father in a book titled "The Secret Life of Henry Ford."

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.

Meet a government agent who laundered millions of dollars for Pablo Escobar

Robert Mazur went undercover for years inside the Medellín cartel, which was sending more than 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every single day. Mazur created more than 30 jewelry stores to create business fronts before he finally got through to the cartel.

John Marshall invested in western land speculation

Like many Virginia elites of his era, Marshall invested in large tracts of western land, including holdings in Kentucky and the Ohio valley. His financial interests mirrored the broader post-Revolutionary pattern of land speculation among political leaders.

A teenage Springsteen struggled with his father

Springsteen's father didn't understand why his son was interested in pursuing a music career, leading to a tense relationship that was often exacerbated by his father's struggles with mental illness. Embed: Podcast

Listen to how the 1902 'poison squad' experiments changed food safety in America

As part of government research, a group of young men were paid to eat standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—which revealed the dangers of unregulated food. The work was led by the first FDA commissioner, Harvey Wiley, who helped end the "century of the great stomachache."

Shakespeare's father was a professional ale taster

The Bard's dad was Stratford-upon-Avon's official "conner," the title reserved for those who tested the strength and quality of locally brewed ale. The job was not as easy as it might sound: He was expected to see if the ale had spoiled, meaning he sometimes had to drink bad beer.

A wealthy Austin man's murder-for-hire conspiracy led to two deaths

Erik Maund, heir to one of the most successful car dealerships in Austin, Texas, was a family man with a mansion by an exclusive golf club. Maund orchestrated a botched murder-for-hire scheme after being blackmailed over his penchant for hiring escorts during business trips.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is a Deadhead

For the uninitiated, that means Powell is an avid fan of the band The Grateful Dead. Powell is also a musician, cyclist, and dog park kerfuffle survivor.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Leonard Lauder, one of Estée's sons, invented the slant on a tube of lipstick

Leonard Lauder was known for being an innovator, both in business and in product. He's credited with creating the now-standard slant of a lipstick tube, slicing the top off a then-bullet-shaped lipstick to better fit women's lips. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

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 distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.

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.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.