Kerr Group, Inc. (1992-1996) Businessman and entrepreneur
Alexander Hewitt Kerr (below) organized this company in
Portland, Oregon in 1903 under the name Hermetic Fruit Jar
Company. The official name was changed in 1904 to Kerr
Glass Manufacturing Company.

Kerr offered the ‘Economy’ brand of mason jar produced for
them by the Illinois-Pacific Glass Co.

The company, with offices in Portland, Oregon, was called the
Hermetic Fruit Jar Company. Kerr Glass owned and operated
seven glass plants in various locations throughout the United
States by 1975. Its products were sold nationally by employees
of the company from its twenty-seven sales offices.

(September 4, 1862 – February 9, 1925)

Ransom Eli Olds (June 3, 1864 – August 26, 1950)

Olds of Lansing, Michigan was a pioneer of the American
automotive industry who founded Olds Motors Works—
which would later become Oldsmobile—on August 21, 1897.

 He claimed to have built his first steam car as early as 1887
and his first gasoline-powered car in 1896.

The modern assembly line and its basic concept is credited
to Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced auto, 
the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, beginning in 1901. 

On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and
Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis (above) were given a patent to
create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth
of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.

The Spruce Goose, the first aircraft with a wingspan in excess of 300 feet, the largest flying boat ever built, made its one and only flight on
November 2, 1947, in Long Beach, California. It was designed and constructed by Howard Hughes and his Aircraft Company.

Howard Robard Hughes Jr.(December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976)

Howard Hughes, one of the richest men to emerge from the American West during the 20th century, died while being flown from Acapulco
to Houston,Texas.

In one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States, autoworkers occupied
the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan. The autoworkers were striking to win recognition of the United Auto Workers
(UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM’s workers; they also wanted to
make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish
a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that
would help protect assembly-line workers from injury. In all, the strike lasted
44 days.

General Motors’ workers celebrate the end of the historic Flint Sit-
Down Strike in 1937. As a result, 100,000 workers gained the right
to union representation.