RETAILERS, PT. TWO (continued): • It should be no surprise that Walmart is the #1 retailer in America. Oklahoma-born Sam Walton went to work at a Des Moines, Iowa J.C. Penney store as a management trainee at age 22, just three days after his college graduation. Earning $75 a month, Walton stayed about 18 months before his World War II military service. After the war, he borrowed $20,000 from his father-in-law and purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. By the early 1960s, Walton and his brother owned 15 Ben Franklin stores. In 1962, Walton opened his first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas. Five years later, the family owned 24 stores, with $12.7 million in annual sales. Five years after that, there were 51 stores, with sales of $78 million. In 1980, there were 276 stores, and in 1989, Walmart became the nation’s #1 retailer. Today, the company employs 2.2 million people worldwide, ringing up more than 200 million customers each week in 11,000 stores in 27 countries.
MOMENTS IN TIME • On April 25, 1719, Daniel Defoe's fictional work "The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s. • On April 21, 1816, Charlotte Bronte, the only one of three novelist Bronte sisters to live past age 31, is born. Charlotte's two older sisters died of illness while at Clergy Daughter's School. The grim institution found its way into her masterpiece "Jane Eyre" (1847). • On April 26, 1913, 13-year-old Mary Phagan is found molested and murdered in the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. Her murder led to one of the most disgraceful episodes of bigotry, injustice and mob violence in American history -- the lynching of her innocent Jewish boss, Leo Frank. © 2015 King Features Synd., Inc.
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• On April 22, 1934, George "Baby Face" Nelson kills Special Agent W. Carter Baum during an FBI raid in northern Wisconsin. The famed gangster was born Lester Gillis but wanted to be known as Big George Nelson. Unfortunately for him, his youthful looks led everyone to call him "Baby Face." • On April 24, 1940, bestselling mystery novelist Sue Grafton, creator of private eye Kinsey Millhone, is born. Starting with "A Is for Alibi" in 1982 and titling each of her books with letters of the alphabet in order, Grafton is currently up to W, for "Wasted." • On April 23, 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute lines tangle during his spacecraft's landing. Komarov plunged to the ground from 23,000 feet. • On April 20, 1980, the Castro regime announces that all Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. are free to board boats at the port of Mariel west of Havana, launching the Mariel Boatlift. The first of 125,000 Cuban refugees from Mariel reached Florida the next day.
• Sebastian Kresge was working as a traveling salesman, peddling to all 19 Woolworth’s stores in the late 1800s. He made the decision to open his own store and invested $8,000 (about $227,000 in today’s dollars) to open a five-and-dime in Memphis, Tennessee. By 1912, there were 85 stores, and by 1924, Kresge was worth about $375,000,000, which translates to nearly $5.2 billion today. In 1962, Kresge opened his first K-Mart store in Garden City, Michigan, a store still in operation today. In 2005, the K-Mart Corporation purchased Sears for $11 billion.
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