Unique Ability Historical Context The San Francisco gold rush brought hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers to California. Levi Strauss moved there and found a fortune, but not in the hills. Born…
Author: alienshooter
John Spilsbury | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context The apprentice of the Royal Geographer to King George III, John Spilsbury’s unique geography teaching aid would become his best known invention. Transferring a map of the world…
John Rockefeller | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context There’s “rich”… and then there’s John D. Rockefeller. Co-founder of the Standard Oil Company in 1870 AD, by the mid-1880s he controlled some 90 percent of all refineries…
John Jacob Astor | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context The first multi-millionaire of the United States (certainly not the last) and the first to create a corporate trust, John Jacob Astor was a self-made tycoon who built…
Jamsetji Tata | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context In 1857 India revolted against British oppression. The rebellion would fail, but amid the turmoil a young Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata would begin his journey to heal his homeland…
Jakob Fugger | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context One of the “super-rich” (about $277 billion dollars in today’s terms) of the Renaissance, Jakob Fugger was an entrepreneur, merchant and banker; he even gained a concession from…
Irene of Athens | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context As empress consort to Leo IV of Byzantium, then dowager empress, then empress regnant, Irene of Athens would set financial policy in the western terminus of the fabled…
Helena Rubinstein | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context The eldest of eight daughters born to the Jewish couple of Augusta and Horace Rubinstein, Helena later (much later) wrote, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”…
Giovanni De’ Medici | Civilization VI
Unique Ability Historical Context Even the most influential and powerful of families get their start somehow, and for the de Medici it was with Giovanni di Bicci, founder of the family’s fortune….