30. Samuel Brannan created the California Gold Rush
When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento the original finders wanted to keep it a secret. Samuel Brannan, a prominent Mormon and newspaper publisher, opened a store near Sutter’s Mill, and when the earliest gold seekers paid for items there with gold Brannan recognized an opportunity. After buying all the digging tools he could find Brannan hawked them in the streets of San Francisco by shouting gold had been discovered, and where. Pans which he purchased for twenty cents he sold for fifteen dollars. Brannan triggered the gold rush which convulsed the nation, and became the first millionaire to result from it, not from mining, but from marketing.