Gassed

John did.

John was a young bookkeeper … he told people everywhere he went his goal was to make $100,000 and live to be 100.

Early on John recognized the growing need for oil … which at the time was in its infancy as an industry. Leveraging his relationships he bought a small refinery in Cleveland and set about trying to control distribution and transportation of oil so he could charge whatever he wanted. Well John’s new company Standard Oil did just that. Pretty soon John refined 90% of the oil made in the US.

Not only did this make John D. Rockefeller the most powerful man in the world … But It also made him a target.

The US government forced the breakup of Standard Oil into 34 separate companies … that would become industry giants in their own right like Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Conoco … and many others.

Even after the breakup, John was the richest man in the world with a fortune estimated (and adjusted for inflation) at over $500 billion dollars … and he lived to the age of 97.

Today, in Canada, John’s Standard Oil legacy lives on every time you fill up at one of the country’s major gas station chains … The one that is the phonetic spelling of initials for Standard Oil … S – O ….

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