1

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola's name was created by Frank M. Robinson, the bookkeeper and business partner of pharmacist John S. Pemberton, who developed the drink in 1886. Robinson chose the name because its two parts referred to ingredients in the original formula: coca leaves and kola nuts. He also believed the repeated C sounds would look appealing in advertising.

Robinson wrote the name in the distinctive flowing script that helped define the brand's visual identity. Here's a surprising twist: the original formula contained an extract of coca leaves that included cocaine, which was removed by the early 1900s. The name, however, stuck, and Coca-Cola went on to become one of the most ubiquitous brands in the world.

2

Kodak

When George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888, he wanted a name that was short, distinctive, and easy to pronounce in different languages. He founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, where he helped make photography more accessible to everyday Americans.

Eastman created the name from scratch, with a particular fondness for the letter K, which he considered strong and distinctive. Rather than using an existing word like "camera" or "photography," he wanted something original that people could easily remember. Over the decades, Kodak became more than a photography brand: its cameras and film helped families preserve birthdays, vacations, holidays, and countless memories. Although the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012 as digital photography transformed the industry, it survived and continues to produce photographic film and printing technology today.

3

Pepsi

Pepsi's story began in 1893, when pharmacist Caleb Bradham created a fountain drink in New Bern, North Carolina. Originally called Brad's Drink, the beverage was renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898. The new name was inspired by the word dyspepsia , an old medical term for indigestion , reflecting Bradham's belief that his drink could aid digestion.

The name also included "Cola," a familiar reference to the kola nut, which was associated with cola beverages. Although Pepsi eventually became known for its flavor and competition with Coca-Cola, its original name reflected the drink's early image as a refreshing beverage with potential digestive benefits.

4

Starbucks

The name Starbucks comes from Moby-Dick , Herman Melville's classic 1851 American novel about a whaling voyage aboard the ship The Pequod. One of the founders of the Seattle coffee company, English teacher Gordon Bowker, liked the sound of names beginning with "St." The team eventually settled on Starbucks, the name of the Pequod’s first mate, Starbuck.

The literary connection also aligned with the founders' vision of a coffee company inspired by the Pacific Northwest's seafaring history. Since opening its first store in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks has grown into a global coffee giant. Its name remains a small nod to an American literary classic.

5

Nike

Nike takes its name from the ancient Greek goddess of victory, making it a natural fit for a company built around sports and athletic achievement. The company was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, initially distributing Japanese running shoes in the United States.

In 1971, the business adopted the name Nike as it prepared to launch its own footwear brand. The famous Swoosh logo, designed by Carolyn Davidson, was created around the same time. Today, both the name and the instantly recognizable Swoosh are closely associated with Nike, making the simple, elongated checkmark one of the most familiar symbols in sports.

6

Google

Google's name comes from googol , a mathematical term for the number one followed by 100 zeros . The term reflects the enormous amount of information the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted their search engine to organize and make accessible.

The company began as a research project at Stanford University before being incorporated in 1998. According to the commonly told origin story, "Google" emerged as a playful variation of "googol," reportedly following a misspelling during the naming process. The name proved memorable, and today, the verb "to Google" is widely used to describe searching for information online.

7

Amazon

When Jeff Bezos launched his online bookstore in 1995, he wanted a name that suggested enormous scale. He chose Amazon, inspired by the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world. The name reflected his ambition to build a business offering an exceptionally wide selection of books and, eventually, much more.

There was also a practical advantage: names beginning with A could appear near the top of alphabetical business listings. Amazon soon expanded beyond books into electronics, clothing, household goods, and countless other products and services. Its familiar arrow-shaped logo, stretching from A to Z, reinforces the idea that customers can find almost anything there.

8

Walmart

Walmart's name is a straightforward abbreviation of its founder's name and the type of store he operated. Sam Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. The shorter name, Walmart, eventually became the company's official brand name.

Walton built the business around a simple idea: offer customers a wide selection of products at low prices. That approach helped Walmart grow from a single discount store into one of America's largest retailers. The name may be simple, but it became closely associated with the company's promise of affordable everyday shopping.

9

McDonald's

McDonald's takes its name from Richard and Maurice McDonald , two brothers who opened a hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in 1940 . Their restaurant developed a streamlined approach to preparing and serving food, helping lay the groundwork for the modern fast-food model.

Businessman Ray Kroc later partnered with the brothers and expanded the concept into a nationwide franchise, opening his first McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. The brothers' surname became an international brand, while the Golden Arches evolved into one of the most recognizable symbols on the planet.

10

Apple

When Apple was founded in 1976, Steve Jobs reportedly wanted a name that sounded friendly, approachable, and less intimidating than the technical names common in the computer industry. He had recently returned from visiting an apple farm and suggested the name Apple Computer. According to accounts from the company's early days, he thought the name sounded appealing and memorable.

Interestingly, the name has another connection to a familiar story from science. Apple's original logo featured Isaac Newton sitting beneath an apple tree, a reference to the famous tale of how a falling apple inspired his thinking about gravity. That design was soon replaced by the now-iconic bitten-apple logo, but the company's simple name remained, and eventually became one of the most instantly recognizable anywhere.

11

Ford

Unlike many modern brand names, Ford comes directly from the surname of its founder, Henry Ford . He established the Ford Motor Company in 1903, during a period when automobiles were still expensive and largely inaccessible to ordinary Americans.

The company's Model T, introduced in 1908, helped change that by making car ownership more affordable through mass production. Over time, the Ford name became associated with American manufacturing, assembly-line innovation, and the growth of the automobile industry. The familiar blue oval logo came later, but the family name remained at the heart of the brand.

12

Kleenex

Kleenex was introduced by the paper products company Kimberly-Clark in 1924 as a disposable facial tissue. Its name drew on the word "clean," reflecting the product's hygienic purpose, while the ending gave it a distinctive commercial sound. The tissues were initially marketed as a convenient way to remove cold cream and cosmetics.

The product's role changed when customers began using the tissues as disposable handkerchiefs. That shift helped turn Kleenex into a household staple, and the brand name eventually became so familiar that many Americans use it to refer to facial tissues in general regardless of brand. It's a striking example of how a made-up product name can become part of everyday language.

1

A renovation project saved thousands of lives on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 189 people. Few people know this part: the death toll could have been much higher. But there was a renovation project underway at the time of the attacks.

The Pentagon’s five-sided structure is divided into five "wedges," and workers had been renovating them one at a time. Flight 77 struck the wedge that had just been completed. Of the 4,500 people who normally worked in that section, only about 800 had moved back in. Without the reinforced construction and the incomplete occupancy, experts believe the casualties would have been catastrophically higher.

2

The Cold War and the hot dog stand

In the middle of the Pentagon’s five-acre center courtyard once stood a modest hot dog stand. According to a Cold War legend (one still retold by official Pentagon tour guides on every public tour), between the 60s and the 80s, Soviet satellite images tracked large groups of high-ranking military officials converging on that small building at the same time every day.

Soviet intelligence reportedly concluded the structure must be the entrance to some underground bunker in America. In reality, all it did was sell lunch. In 2006, the original stand was torn down, and a sandwich shop was built in its place.

3

Its construction began on September 11th, exactly 60 years before the attack

Builders broke ground on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941. That was exactly 60 years to the day before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that would strike the same building.

Construction had been ordered by Army Brigadier General Brehon Somervell, who wanted a permanent headquarters for the Defense Department to replace its then-17 scattered offices across Washington, D.C.

The project was extraordinarily ambitious: plans called for the world’s largest office building to be completed in just 16 months. In the end, the conception, design, and construction of the entire Pentagon building took a total of 15 months.

4

The same person oversaw its construction and the Manhattan Project

Colonel Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers took charge of Pentagon construction in August 1941. He worked six days a week and drove his team relentlessly, at one point employing more than 15,000 workers around the clock.

When the Pentagon was finished in January 1943, Groves was assigned to lead the Manhattan Project, America’s secret program to build the atomic bomb . His deputy, Captain Robert Furman, followed him into the Manhattan Project as chief of foreign intelligence. Together, the men who built the world’s largest office building went on to produce the weapon that ended World War II.

5

Why is it shaped like that?

The Pentagon’s iconic five-sided shape was the consequence of a geographic accident. The original site selected for the building, near Arlington Cemetery, **happened to be bordered on five sides by roads. **Architects designed the structure to fit those boundaries, producing a pentagonal floor plan. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened: worried the massive building would obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington, he ordered the site moved to its current location along the Potomac River. But the five-sided design had already been drawn up, and nobody changed it.

6

It was the first desegregated building in Virginia

When the Pentagon was designed in 1941, segregation was the law in Virginia. Original plans called for doubled bathroom facilities: separate ones for Black and white employees, as required by Virginia statute. But President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal employment and government contracting.

As a federal building, the Pentagon was exempt from Virginia law. It became the only building in the state where segregation was not enforced. A fully desegregated federal workplace that opened in 1943. The doubled bathrooms were built anyway, as the plans were too far along to revise, but were never used as separately designated spaces.

7

Its construction was surprisingly frugal and incredibly fast

Ground broke on September 11, 1941, and construction finished on January 15, 1943, just 16 months later. More than 15,000 workers were on site around the clock. Wartime office shortages were so severe that employees moved into completed wings before the rest of the building was finished. Steel was too scarce to use extensively, so builders relied almost entirely on reinforced concrete. The 689,000 tons of sand and gravel required came directly from the nearby Potomac River, cutting transportation costs. The project was budgeted at $35 million, but the final bill was $63 million, which would translate to over $900 million in today’s dollars.

8

You can walk between its farthest points in only 7 minutes

The Pentagon is the world’s largest low-rise office building: 6.5 million square feet of space, which is three times the total floor area of the Empire State Building. Each of its five outer walls is 921 feet long. It has 7,754 windows and 17.5 miles of corridors. Approximately 26,000 military and civilian employees report for work there every day.

Despite that scale, the building’s concentric ring design is so efficient that it takes only about seven minutes to walk between its two farthest points.

9

The man who secretly lived inside its walls

During construction, Colonel Groves drove his deputy, Captain Robert Furman, so relentlessly that Furman rarely left the building. To cope, Furman had contractors build him a small, windowless apartment hidden inside the walls of the Army’s Ordnance Division. In this private room, he could sleep and shower without leaving the premises.

When construction ended and personnel dispersed, knowledge of the hidden room was never passed on to building management. Months later, when Furman returned to Washington on Manhattan Project intelligence business, he found the apartment undiscovered and exactly as he’d left it.

For over a year, he would slip back to the Pentagon, pop open a wall panel, spend the night, and emerge in the morning with his suitcase. He was finally caught in 1943 and forced to surrender the keys. It was never disclosed whether the secret apartment was maintained or eventually absorbed back into the official floor plans.

10

It houses over 30 restaurants, including everyone's favorite chains

The Pentagon feeds roughly 26,000 people a day, and its dining options read less like a military headquarters and more like a mall food court. The main Concourse Food Court, which opened in September 2009 and seats 875 people, is the largest of several dining areas.

Confirmed chains currently inside the building include McDonald’s, Five Guys, Subway, Popeyes, Starbucks (multiple locations), Dunkin’ (two locations), Panera Bread, Taco Bell, Panda Express, Baskin-Robbins, Potbelly, Jamba Juice, and Moe’s Southwest Grill, among others. The building also houses a CVS pharmacy, a florist, a jeweler, and a dry cleaner. In the summer of 2024, Potbelly became the first restaurant to open in the center courtyard. Yes, the very spot where the legendary Cold War hot dog stand once stood.

1

Woolworth’s

Woolworth’s was the place to buy everything from school supplies and toys to household goods and candy—or even to grab lunch. The first store opened its doors in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879. It was a five-and-dime shop, and the chain soon became one of America’s most recognizable retail names, with over 3,000 stores nationwide at its peak. So, why did it disappear?

With the steady rise of suburban shopping centers and large discount stores, Woolworth’s couldn’t keep up and began a slow decline in the 1960s that culminated in 1997, when it closed its final stores for good.

2

A&P

A&P used to be the spot to get everyday groceries. It began as a tea and coffee business in 1859 and later evolved into one of America’s biggest supermarkets with more than 16,000 stores in the country at its peak. But despite pioneering high-volume retailing, A&P couldn’t stick around.

Over the decades, newer competitors entered the market, and grocery shopping became more and more competitive. Walmart, Target, Aldi, Whole Foods—A&P failed to adapt and filed for bankruptcy twice, first in 2010 and again in 2015, and finally shut down in November 2015.

3

Blockbuster

Blockbuster was the go-to for movie rentals . It dominated the market with 9,100 stores worldwide by 2004, about $6 billion in revenue, and thousands of movies to choose from—it was hard to imagine Blockbuster ever falling, but it did.

The rapid advancement of technology hit Blockbuster hard, with newer options like DVD-by-mail services, Redbox kiosks, and the final blow: streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and more. All Blockbuster corporate-owned stores closed by January 2014; however, you can still visit one holdout location in Bend, Oregon.

4

Montgomery Ward

Long before Amazon, consumers could buy almost anything from Montgomery Ward from the comfort of their homes , and the company would ship it directly to them. It felt like online shopping before the internet. So why did it vanish?

To adapt to newer shopping habits, Montgomery Ward opened physical stores and started competing with brands like Sears; but once suburban malls and discount stores became widespread in the 1980s, Montgomery Ward couldn’t keep pace and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and again in 2001.

5

Circuit City

Circuit City started in 1949 and quickly became the source for TVs, stereos, VCRs, video games, and just about every kind of electronics , especially during the 1980s. The company continued growing by the early 2000s, expanding to more than 600 stores, though one controversial decision made it trip and fall.

Circuit City was already struggling to compete with Best Buy and Walmart. And in 2007, it replaced its commissioned sales staff with low-paid hourly workers, damaging customer service—often considered one of Circuit City’s biggest strategic mistakes. By March 2009, the chain was gone.

6

Caldor

There was a time when one trip to Caldor could cover almost everything on your shopping list. Founded in 1951, it became a major one-stop discount department store . By the 1990s, it had grown to more than 150 stores across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, but in 1995 it filed for bankruptcy. What happened in between?

Big box stores like Walmart and Target were expanding rapidly, and Caldor simply fell behind as people moved toward newer retail formats that combined department stores and supermarkets. Plus, the company took on a lot of debt in 1991, which only made things worse. Caldor finally closed for good in 1999.

7

Borders

Borders is a reminder of a time when buying a book was an experience, rather than just clicking a few buttons online. It opened in 1971 and set itself apart from other modern bookstores. At Borders, you could spend an entire afternoon browsing not just books, but music and DVDs or even grabbing a coffee.

Around 2003–2004, Borders had more than 1,200 stores worldwide , but it failed to adapt to an inevitable growing trend: online book sales. Amazon eventually took over, and Borders couldn’t stay in the game, closing its final location in September 2011.

8

G.C. Murphy

Much like Woolworth’s, G.C. Murphy was a five-and-dime store that sold a little bit of everything and had lunch counters or snack bars where people would hang out. The company opened in 1906, and it operated more than 500 stores by 1976.

But once the traditional five-and-dime model came under pressure from discount giants, G.C. Murphy was forced to adapt. The chain did make some efforts and experimented with bigger stores and different formats, but it wasn’t enough, and G.C. Murphy filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

9

Zayre

Zayre entered the market in 1956 as a classic discount department store that looked more like a warehouse . It was a no-frills, self-service shopping experience with massive stores, wide-open interiors, and exposed ceilings where you could find lots of everyday items like clothing, household goods, or appliances at low prices.

While it was pretty successful, especially across the Northeast and Midwest, Zayre struggled to keep up with giants like Target. It tried to reinvent itself by founding TJ Maxx in 1977, but eventually sold the remaining Zayre stores to Ames in 1988, and the Zayre name vanished by 1990.

10

Service Merchandise

Service Merchandise was founded in 1934 and, unlike typical retail stores, it introduced a strange new concept called the " catalog showroom " in 1960, where display floors showcased single working samples of products, and the actual inventory was stored in an adjacent backroom warehouse. Customers would look at a catalog, place an order, and an employee would bring it to them.

The concept proved successful, and Service Merchandise operated more than 400 showrooms by the mid-1990s. But Service Merchandise’s model meant longer waiting times, and traditional discount stores began offering a faster and easier shopping experience. The company tried to modernize by introducing electronic inventory systems, but it didn’t work out. By 2002, Service Merchandise was gone.