Blog Biz

Jerry Jones sat near the back of Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas on February 12, 2000, largely unseen by most mourners present. The man who had bought the Dallas Cowboys almost exactly 11 years earlier, and who had fired the only coach the franchise had truly known, remained seated in silence during Tom … Read more

In the summer of 1896, at the Breakers, before all the families who counted, Gertrude Vanderbilt married Harry Payne Whitney. He was handsome, rich, and entirely suitable. It should have been the morning she finally walked out of her father’s house and into a life she could call her own. In one sense, she did … Read more

Charles Arthur Floyd, the Oklahoma outlaw known to the world as Pretty Boy Floyd, was shot and killed by law enforcement on October 22nd, 1934, in a cornfield near East Liverpool, Ohio. His death came just months after the FBI had named him Public Enemy Number One, a title he assumed in the wake of … Read more

Vincent “Chin” Gigante would eventually be remembered as the powerful boss of the Genovese crime family, commanding hundreds of made men with the power of life and death. But in the 1950s, long before he sat at the top, the future Mafia boss was a young hustler finding creative ways to make money. His early … Read more

In November 2009, the Hyatt hotel chain went public, marking a major milestone for the family behind it. The company sold 38 million shares at $25 each, a move that came 30 years after the Pritzkers, the family that controlled it, had first taken the business private. The initial public offering was the culmination of … Read more