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In 1895 traveling salesman King Camp Gillette took advice from William Painter, inventor of the crown cork bottle cap, to invent something people use once and throw away. Six years of failure ended when MIT chemistry graduate William Emery Nickerson worked out how to temper and sharpen thin sheet steel, and with investor John Joyce they formed the American Safety Razor Company in 1901. The first year on sale, 1903, brought just 51 razors and 168 blades, but an automated grinder in 1904 lifted sales above 90,000. When gas masks required clean-shaven faces in 1917, Gillette sold 1.1 million kits, and in 1918 the U.S. military issued them to all servicemen.

As the patent expired in 1921, Gillette sold its old design as the $1 Brownie beside the $5 New Improved, creating the razor and blades model. In the late 1920s, a buyout of rival AutoStrop exposed that Gillette had overstated sales and profits by $12 million over five years to boost executive bonuses, and AutoStrop owner Henry Gaisman took control in 1930. The Blue Blade of 1932 restored trust. In World War II Gillette made magnetized compass blades, hollow handles hiding escape maps, and counterfeit German blades for Allied agents.

• In 1962 Wilkinson Sword's coated stainless blade lasted three times longer, using a method Gillette had patented but held back.
• Research into the hysteresis effect, where the first blade tugs a whisker so the second can cut it lower, led to the Trac II twin blade in 1971.
• To counter Bic's 1974 disposable, Gillette sold the premium blue Prestobarba in Latin America alongside cheaper yellow decoy razors it advertised against.
• Warren Buffett's $600 million stake in 1989 helped fend off raiders such as Revlon, and the 1998 Mach3 launch cost $300 million in marketing.
• Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for over $50 billion in 2005, and the 2019 "We Believe" ad drew both praise and boycott calls.

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In 1976 venture capitalist Robert Swanson, 28, cold-called biochemist Herbert Boyer, and over beers they put in $500 each to found Genentech. Boyer and Stanley Cohen had shown in 1973 that restriction enzymes could cut DNA fragments for insertion into another organism via plasmids; Cohen stayed in academia, while Boyer chose commercialization. In 1977, working with the Beckman Research Institute, Genentech got bacteria to produce the human hormone somatostatin, the first human gene expressed in bacteria that way. In 1978 it made synthetic human insulin, approved in 1982 as Humulin and licensed to Eli Lilly, which had the manufacturing scale and regulatory experience Genentech lacked.

Genentech followed with Protropin growth hormone in 1985, the clot buster Activase in 1987, Rituxan for lymphomas, and in 1998 Herceptin, an antibody that blocks HER2 growth signals in some breast cancers. Avastin, launched in 2004 to cut off tumors' blood supply, lost its breast cancer approval in 2011 when larger studies showed no significant survival benefit. In 2013 Kadcyla attached chemotherapy to a targeting antibody. Roche took a majority stake in 1990 and bought the rest in 2009 for about $46.8 billion.

• In 1999 Genentech paid UCSF a $200 million settlement ending a nine-year suit claiming Protropin used university technology.
• Genentech bought Tanox in 2006 and Seragon in 2014 to feed its pipeline.
• A 2015 deal worth $60 million gave it access to 23andMe genetic data.
• In 2009 Representatives Joe Wilson and Blaine Luetkemeyer read talking points drafted by Genentech lobbyists on biosimilar exclusivity on the House floor.
• In 2024 Lonza bought Genentech's Vacaville, California, manufacturing site for $1.2 billion.

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London Gatwick in Crawley, West Sussex, handles over 43 million passengers a year, the second-busiest airport in the UK and tenth in Europe, on one active runway. It began as a grass aerodrome in the late 1920s, started commercial flights in 1933, and served as RAF Gatwick in World War II. After the circular 1935 Beehive terminal, architects Yorke Rosenberg Mardall led a 1955 to 1988 redevelopment whose South Terminal opened in May 1958 as one of the first enclosed pier-based terminals, letting passengers walk indoors to their planes. In 1983 it added the UK's first automated people mover, to a satellite pier.

The 1978 Bermuda II treaty let only a few airlines, including British Airways, Pan Am and TWA, fly to the U.S. from Heathrow, pushing other U.S. carriers to Gatwick. The 2008 EU-US Open Skies deal ended that, and after US Airways dropped Charlotte in 2013, Gatwick had no scheduled U.S. airline until JetBlue arrived in 2021. Ordered sold by the Competition Commission in 2009, it went to a consortium led by Global Infrastructure Partners for £1.51 billion, with Vinci later taking 50.01 percent. A plan to move the northern runway 12 meters so both can operate together was approved in September 2025 and upheld by the Court of Appeal in August 2026.

• The two runways sit 656 feet apart, too close for simultaneous use because of wake turbulence, so the northern one serves mainly as a taxiway.
• A 1979 agreement with West Sussex County Council barred a second runway for 40 years, and in 2015 the Airports Commission backed Heathrow instead.
• easyJet paid £20 million for 25 pairs of daily slots left by Flybe and now bases over 60 aircraft at Gatwick, its largest base.
• Drone sightings from December 19, 2018, shut the runway over three days, stranding or delaying 110,000 passengers; a local couple was arrested and released without charge.
• A 1959 Turkish Airlines crash in fog killed 14, and a 1969 Ariana Afghan Airlines crash into a house killed 50.

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In 2023 the U.S. Space Force gave over 6,000 smartwatches to its Guardians to test whether wearable data could replace fitness tests, choosing Garmin models because their GPS could be disabled. Gary Burrell recruited engineer Min Kao from a defense contractor in 1983, and in 1989 they founded ProNav in Lenexa, Kansas, later renamed Garmin from their first names. The GPS 100 for boaters drew 5,000 orders at $2,500 each at a Chicago marine show in 1990. The U.S. Army became the first major customer, using its handheld receivers in the 1991 Gulf War, and by 1995 sales reached $102 million with a $23 million profit.

The StreetPilot car navigator arrived in 1998, Garmin listed on the Nasdaq in December 2000 at $14 a share, and the nüvi line followed in 2005. The GNS 430 in 1998 and the FAA-certified G1000 glass cockpit in 2004, aided by the 2003 purchase of UPS Aviation Technologies, made Garmin an aviation original equipment maker. When smartphones made car units obsolete, it moved to the wrist, building on the 2003 Forerunner 201, the 2012 Fenix and the 2014 Vivofit, and by 2022 led the market for smartwatches over $500. Revenue reached $7.25 billion by 2025.

• Garmin often uses transflective memory-in-pixel displays, giving the Vivofit over a year of battery life.
• In July 2020 WastedLocker ransomware shut Garmin's systems, blocking pilots from downloading the 28-day navigation database updates aircraft need to fly legally.
• Hackers reportedly demanded $10 million, which experts speculate Garmin paid.
• Autoland, which can land a small plane at the nearest suitable airport after one button press, won the Collier Trophy in 2020.
• In July 2026 Garmin launched a screenless, subscription-free smart band alongside its purchase of TrainingPeaks.

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Fuji Photo Film Company was founded in 1934 as a subsidiary of chemical maker Daicel to produce film in Japan, mastering silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin. In the 1980s it pushed into Kodak's home market by taking the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics sponsorship after Kodak hesitated, forcing American retailers to stock its film, then undercutting on price and building a U.S. plant. Kodak petitioned the U.S. Commerce Department in 1995, and the World Trade Organization rejected its claims in 1998. In 1994 vice president Juntaro Suzuki publicly ended payments to sokaiya extortionists tied to the yakuza, who threatened to disrupt shareholder meetings, and he was murdered outside his home.

As film fell to about 3 percent of sales, Fujifilm formed Fujifilm Holdings in 2006 and repurposed its chemistry. About 4,000 antioxidant compounds developed to stop photos fading, plus its expertise in collagen and nano-scale layering, became the Astalift skincare line. It bought Hitachi's diagnostic imaging business for $1.63 billion in 2019 and a Biogen biologics plant in Denmark for nearly $900 million, then invested $928 million to double it. Subsidiary Toyama Chemical's antiviral Avigan, or favipiravir, was tested and approved by several countries against COVID-19.

• Fujifilm invented computed radiography in the 1980s, replacing analog X-rays with reusable digital plates.
• In 2020 it demonstrated a 400-terabyte magnetic tape cartridge using strontium ferrite particles.
• A 2018 $6.1 billion bid for control of Xerox was blocked by investors including Carl Icahn; in 2019 Fujifilm bought Xerox's 25 percent stake in Fuji Xerox and renamed it Fujifilm Business Innovation.
• Demand for the X100V outstripped production, and Instax won younger buyers.
• By 2025 Fujifilm had nearly 12 percent of digital camera shipments among major Japanese makers, passing Nikon for third place.

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In 2026 a malaria outbreak at Frankfurt Airport sickened six workers and killed two, traced to an infected mosquito that arrived on a flight; a smaller incident occurred in 2023. Frankfurt has the most direct routes of any airport, 330 destinations on five continents, moved over 61 million passengers in 2024 and is Europe's busiest cargo hub. It sits at the Frankfurter Kreuz, where the A3 and A5 autobahns meet, inside the industrial belt known as the Blue Banana. Its four runways each have narrow roles: Runway 18 handles only southbound takeoffs, and the Northwest Runway handles only landings and bans the A380 and 747, allowing 126 movements an hour.

A 2016 study valued the airport's economic impact at $22.3 billion, but the Northwest Runway, inaugurated by Angela Merkel in 2011, brought weekly noise protests from towns such as Kelsterbach and Rüsselsheim. The Hessian administrative court banned flights from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., a ruling later upheld by Germany's federal administrative court. Terminal 3 opened in phases from April to June 2026 on the former Rhein-Main Air Base, drawing 56 airlines including Oneworld and SkyTeam members and Emirates, and Terminal 2 closed for renovation until the mid-2030s.

• A bomb in a canvas bag exploded in Hall B in 1985, killing three people and injuring over 30.
• In 2011 a 21-year-old shot and killed two U.S. airmen on a bus bound for Ramstein Air Base; when his gun jammed, an airport employee and a staff sergeant chased him until police arrived.
• A 2007 terror plot targeting the airport and Ramstein was foiled.
• The Squaire, linked to Terminal 1, covers 140,000 square meters with KPMG offices, two Hilton hotels and a people mover carrying 1,300 passengers an hour.
• About 25 percent of passengers arrive by rail, using a regional S-Bahn station and a long-distance ICE station opened in 1999.

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In the summer of 2010 a French Rafale landed on the USS Harry S. Truman, and American crews swapped its engine at sea. The jet exists because France left the European fighter project with the UK, West Germany, Italy and Spain in 1985: the others wanted a heavy interceptor, while France needed a lighter jet that could fly from carriers. The others built the Eurofighter Typhoon; France relied on Dassault for the airframe, Thales for avionics and radar, and Safran for the M88 engines. The Rafale A demonstrator flew in July 1986, reaching Mach 1.3, and production jets were designed digitally in Dassault Systèmes' CATIA so parts made in Paris, Martignas and Biarritz fit at Mérignac.

The Rafale C, B and naval M use a delta wing with close-coupled canards and are deliberately unstable, controlled by a quadruple-redundant fly-by-wire system that allows 9g in combat and 11g in emergencies. The Rafale M is about 500 kilograms heavier, with a jump strut nose gear, and France built the carrier Charles de Gaulle for it. Data fusion combines the Thales RBE2 AESA radar, the passive OSF optronic sensor and the SPECTRA electronic warfare suite. After 14 years with France as its only buyer, Egypt ordered 24 in 2015, followed by India, Qatar, Greece, Croatia, Indonesia and the UAE.

• About 70 percent of the airframe is composite, and the canopy is gold-coated to cut radar reflections.
• In Operation Serval in January 2013, Rafales flew from Saint-Dizier to strike targets in Mali in a 9.5-hour sortie with five aerial refuelings, landing in N'Djamena, Chad.
• In April 2024 Rafales based in Jordan shot down Iranian drones headed for Israel.
• Dassault aims for four jets a month by 2028, and Tata Advanced Systems plans to build fuselages in Hyderabad.
• The F5 standard planned for the 2030s will control a 10-ton stealth drone wingman and carry new hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles.

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Flame, also called Flamer or Skywiper, surfaced in 2012 while Iran's Maher Center, Kaspersky Lab and the CrySyS Lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics were hunting a different virus wiping files at Iran's oil ministry at the United Nations' request. CrySyS called it arguably the most complex malware ever found. At 20 megabytes it was enormous, built in C++ with Lua scripts so operators could push new modules, protected by five encryption methods and carrying its own SQLite database to catalog stolen files. It recorded microphone audio, screenshots, keystrokes, network traffic and Skype calls, and used Bluetooth to pull contact data from nearby phones.

Flame evaded security software by presenting a forged Microsoft code-signing certificate, created through a chosen-prefix collision against an old Terminal Server licensing certificate still using MD5. It hid with rootkit techniques and backdated its files as far back as 1994. About 1,000 machines were infected, mostly in Iran. The Washington Post reported it was part of Olympic Games, a U.S. and Israeli operation; Iran's CERT pointed to Israel; the U.S. denied responsibility. Kaspersky linked it to the Equation Group, noting a USB-spreading module shared with an early Stuxnet. In June 2012 operators sent a suicide command that erased Flame from infected machines.

• An April 2012 attack linked to Flame led Iranian officials to cut internet links to oil terminals.
• About 65 percent of targets were in the Middle East, including Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Egypt.
• Flame checked which antivirus product was installed and changed its behavior and file extensions to avoid it.
• In 2019 researchers Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade and Silas Cutler found Flame 2.0 with new encryption and obfuscation.
• A compiler timestamp the authors failed to scrub showed Flame 2.0 was built around 2014, two years after the supposed shutdown.

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In 2018 a 91-year-old man told San Jose detectives that his stepdaughter Karen Navarra was fine when he left her home, but her Fitbit recorded a heart rate spike and then a stop at 3:28 p.m., when his car was on camera in her driveway. Fitbit began in March 2007 when James Park and Eric Friedman registered Healthy Metrics Research, Inc. in Delaware, renaming it Fitbit that October. Its first tracker shipped in 2009, and by 2012 mobile apps, Bluetooth syncing, badges and leaderboards turned walking into a game; users with friends on the app took about 700 more steps a day. In 2011, public-by-default profiles let Google index users' manually logged sexual activity.

Fitbit raised $732 million in its 2015 IPO, and in October 2016 Park declared it a digital healthcare company. Hardware trouble followed: the Fitbit Force was recalled in 2014 after about 9,900 skin irritation reports, and 1.7 million Ionic watches were recalled in March 2022 over burns, leading to a $12.25 million penalty in January 2025. In June 2020 it built Fitbit Flow, a low-cost emergency resuscitator authorized by the FDA. Google closed its $2.1 billion purchase in January 2021, the founders left in early 2024, and in May 2026 the app was renamed Google Health.

• A 2015 assault claim unraveled when the accuser's Fitbit showed her awake and walking all night.
• In the 2017 Connie Dabate case, her tracker placed her at a gym when her husband said a masked intruder attacked them at home.
• Data from Tess Richey's account, shared with her mother, helped Toronto police trace her final movements in 2017.
• Over 100 users reported burns from overheating Ionic smartwatches, some second and third degree.
• Branding moved from Fitbit by Google in 2022 to Google Fitbit in 2024, and Fitbit smartwatches were discontinued in August 2024.

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Expedia launched inside Microsoft on October 22, 1996, under Rich Barton, its name blending exploration and speed. A low-margin travel agency did not fit a software company, so Microsoft spun it off in 1999. Barry Diller's IAC took a controlling interest in 2001, bought the rest in 2003, and spun it off again in 2005. Expedia then bought rivals rather than building: Trivago for 477 million euros in 2012, Travelocity for $280 million and Orbitz for $1.6 billion in 2015, and HomeAway for $3.9 billion, later merged into Vrbo. Now based in Seattle with 16,500 employees, the group earned $14.7 billion in revenue in 2025 across 3.5 million lodging properties and over 500 airlines.

Expedia also runs physical stores: Expedia Cruises began as CruiseShipCenters International in Vancouver in 1987 and had 260 franchise locations by 2024. In 2011 the South Carolina Supreme Court ordered subsidiary Travelscape to pay $6.3 million in back sales taxes, ruling that furnishing hotel rooms created a physical presence. In early 2020 Diller called the company sclerotic and bloated, and 3,000 jobs were cut that year, followed by 1,500 more in 2024. Lawsuits over hidden ranking practices came from independent hotels in California and regulators in Australia.

• One Key, launched in 2023, links loyalty points across Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, and Travel Shops in 2024 let influencers earn commissions.
• During the 2020 pandemic, customers faced hours-long waits and disconnections seeking refunds, sparking multiple lawsuits.
• A February 2020 UN Human Rights Council list of companies in West Bank settlements included Expedia Group.
• In the Buckeye Tree Lodge case, Expedia showed non-partner hotels as sold out and steered users elsewhere, settling in 2021.
• Australian proceedings found Trivago highlighted a higher-priced room over 66 percent of the time based on pay-per-click bids, leading to a $32.91 million fine.