Kellogg’s was instrumental in pushing a widespread dietary shift from hot, weighty breakfasts to cereal, but it wasn’t the only sanitarium-born cereal company to become successful. By a twist of fate, C. W. Post, the founder of General Foods, stayed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and was inspired to create his earliest successful breakfast products based on the dietary regimen Dr. Kellogg prescribed for him there. General Foods was the longtime corporate umbrella for Post cereals, and after playing a part in multiple mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs since the 1980s, Post Holdings Inc (NYSE:POST) is now an independently traded public company, while the rest of General Foods remains part of Kraft Foods Group Inc (NASDAQ:KRFT).
Pipeline’s progress
Chevron also shares its birthday with another notable oil industry first. The first known reference to an oil pipeline laid from a productive oil well was made in the Derrick Handbook of Petroleum on Feb. 19, 1863. As reported in that publication and later recounted by Samuel T. Pees of the Oil History site:
Barrows & Co. of Tarr Farm have for some time been conveying oil from the [Densmore wells] to their refinery, a distance of 800 to 1000 feet by this means and the plan was said to work admirably. A two-inch iron pipe was laid in 1863 from the Tarr Farm to the Humboldt refinery at Plumer, an oil line distance of two and a half miles. The oil was forced through this by powerful pumps.
Unfortunately, this early pipeline was hardly as sophisticated as those in use today, and its leaky joints and faulty pumping machinery could not handle the job over the long term. Despite these flaws, the pipeline so threatened transportation workers that had been moving the oil previously that they simply tore the pipeline apart rather than assisting in its repair.
Pipelines have since become an indispensable part of the oil value chain, and the United States maintains by far the largest energy pipeline network in the world. The country’s 200,000 mile petroleum pipeline network was 10 times as large as that laid on the entire European continent in 2001. Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE:KMI), which primarily operates its pipelines through MLP subsidiary Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (NYSE:KMP), is considered “the ExxonMobil of pipeline companies” following a 2011 deal that brought its total pipeline network (including natural gas) to a size of 80,000 miles.
The article Why the Dow Should Hate Change — and Other Fascinating Facts originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Alex Planes.
Fool contributor Alex Planes has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Chevron and Kinder Morgan. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America and Kinder Morgan.
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