10 Things You Didn’t Know About the World’s Biggest Corporations

Epoch Video
12/21/2014
Updated:
1/14/2015

Video Transcript

By the time major companies are regularly making international headlines, most people have a pretty good idea what the businesses do or manufacture.

Here are 10 things you may not know about the world’s biggest corporations.

Number 10. Apple

The company clearly sells a lot of computers, phones, and tablets, but it can be hard to grasp what an immense quantity that really is. Well, how’s this for perspective - it’s enough give the company a higher value than the Russian stock market.

Number 9. Vaseline

The multi-tasker can ease a number of skin irritations, but its creator believed the jelly’s powers extended far beyond topical purposes. He lived to be 96 years old and said his long life was the result of swallowing a spoonful of Vaseline every day.

Number 8. Yahoo!

Sure, search engines, email, and news are all exciting things, but the company’s jubilant name is actually an acronym. It stands for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle – exclamation point.

Number 7. Google

Naming companies is no doubt hard, so some slack should be given to whoever came up with the Internet giant’s original moniker, ‘BackRub.’ Thankfully it was changed quickly, because using that word like we use ‘Google’ could become really awkward.

Number 6. Starbucks

Coffee is what they’re known for, but buying it isn’t their biggest expense. They spend more money on employee health insurance than they do on beans.

Number 5. Facebook

Corporations have been known to spend a lot of money picking out signature colors, but for Facebook it was an easy decision. They went with blue as founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind, so it’s the hue he can see best.

Number 4. McDonald’s

Everybody knows they rule the burger world, but would it surprise you to learn that they’re a giant in the toy industry as well? The restaurant chain sells enough trinket-laden Happy Meals to make them the largest toy distributor in the world.

Number 3. Walmart

If the retailer were to become an independent nation it would be around the 25th richest one in the world.

Number 2. IKEA

Who doesn’t love stylish and affordable furniture? Clearly a lot of people in Europe are big fans, as it’s estimated that 1 in 10 people on the continent was conceived in a bed sold by the company.

Number 1. Coca-Cola

Talk about not putting all of your eggs – or in this case, beverages - in one basket. Coke produces about 35 hundred different kinds of drinks. Even at a rate of one per day it would be 9 years before a person had sampled each one.

Which fact are you most surprised by?