You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

YouTube's original HQ was a small office above a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California

[Lee Stewart]

Walgreens began as a single drugstore

[Lee Stewart]

Hewlett-Packard's first HQ and factory was a garage in Palo Alto, California

[Lee Stewart]

The world's second-largest fast food chain, KFC has a total of 22,621 locations in 136 countries. The chain started mega-small in 1930 when its famous founder Colonel Harland Sanders snapped up a Shell service station on Route 25 just outside North Corbin and began selling fried chicken and other diner staples such as country ham and steaks to hungry travelers.

[Lee Stewart]

Online shopping and auctions giant eBay was created by programmer Pierre Omidyar in September 1998 as the AuctionWeb, a hobby project that was part of his larger personal website. Omidyar wrote the code for the site at home in suburban San Jose, California, over Labor Day weekend. The first product listed was a broken laser pointer.

[Lee Stewart]

Now a subsidiary of Unilver, ice cream company Ben & Jerry's started out in May 1978 as an ice cream parlor in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

[Lee Stewart]

Harley-Davidson built its first motorcycle in a backyard shed in Milwaukee

[Lee Stewart]

7-11, the world's largest chain of convenience stores originated in 1927 when Southland Ice Co. employee John Jefferson Green began selling basics like eggs and bread on a stand in front of one of the firm's ice houses in Dallas.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]