Below are listed the names of 20 businesses, enterprises, commercial establishments, partnerships, companies and businesspersons etc who are connected with various historical events. Sometimes they were merely the locations of an event or else the witnesses of an event or else were passively caught up in events while some were even the active instigators of an historical event. Can you name the type of business in question, its location, the date of the event and the event itself?
   
1. Boland’s



type: bakery
location: Grand Canal Street, Dublin, Ireland
date: 24 April 1916
event: Easter Rising - the smell of the hot cross buns from Good Friday three days earlier must have still been in the air when on a quiet Easter Monday morning the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Brotherhood under the command of one Eamon de Valera arrived without appointment
 
2. Boston



type: steamship company
location: Panama Canal
date: 15 August 1914
event: opening ceremony - the company's SS Ancon was the first ship to pass thru

3. Brewer



type: sugar cane and banking
location: Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii
date: 17 January 1893
event: overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy - one of the 'Big Five' companies in Hawaii, a partner Peter Cushman Jones had been appointed minister of finance by Queen Lili'uokalani only 2 months earlier in November 1892, yet along with other 'Big Five' conspirators in the Queen's government they overthrew the monarchy in a coup d'etat and established the 'Republic of Hawaii' with a view to annexation by the US  

4. Bull’s



type: boarding house
location: Deptford, Kent, England
date: 30 May 1593
event: death of Christopher Marlowe - often popularly but erroneously described as having been a 'bawdy tavern', Eleanor Bull's boarding house in Deptford was neither a tavern and nor was is known to be particularly bawdy

5. Burghard



type: printer
location: 46 Liverpool Street, London, England
date: 21 February 1848
event: publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

6. Coeur



type:merchant and financier
location: Poitiers, France
date: 05 June 1453
event: forced to make penance to King Charles VII of France and forfeit most of his wealth for (allegedly) poisoning the King's mistress - the richest commoner in France and one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Jacques Coeur is said to have shown great nobility in his adversity  

7. Coronation


type: cinema
location: Sandhurst Road, Bombay, India
date: 03 May 1913
event: birth of Indian cinema - the Gateway of India was still being built when Dadsaheb Phalke's film Raja Harishchandra premiered three miles away

8. Drake



type: oil well
location: Cherrytree, Pennsylvania
date: 27 August 1859
event: first oil rush - Edwin Drake's well was not the first oil well in the world or even the first oil well in North America but his strike in 1859 and the technique used prompted an oil rush from which the global oil industry has never looked back

9. Farina



type: perfume maker
location: Cologne, Holy Roman Empire
date: 06 October 1794
event: occupation of the city by French forces - the Farina family had been making Eau de Cologne for over 80 years when the French invasion prompted the formal numbering of the city's streets, this resulted in the granting of the number '4711' to the Glockengasse address of the Mulhens family, when the Mulhens subsequently launched their own rival scent, the '4711' label would become iconic worldwide and eclipse the Farina original

10. Farriner’s



type: bakery
location: Pudding Lane, London, England
date: 02 September 1666
event: outbreak of the Great Fire of London

11. Ford



type: car manufacturer
location: 351 Upper Bukit Timah Road, Singapore
date: 15 February 1942
event: surrender of British Empire forces to Japanese - today known as the 'Old Ford Motor Factory' and a museum, the factory was brand new in 1942 having only opened 4 months earlier in October 1941, Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita and British Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival met across the boardroom table
 
12. Ford’s



type: theatre
location: 10th Street Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia
date: 14 April 1865
event: assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln

13. Gray’s



type: ropewalks
location: Boston, Massachusetts
date: 02 March 1770
event: brawl at John Gray's Ropewalks - this incident between ropewalkers and British soldiers is believed to have greatly heightened tensions in the town leading to the Boston Massacre 3 days later

14. Halkokari



type: tar and lumber warehouses
location: Halkokari beach, Carleby (Kokkola), Finland
date: 07 June 1854
event: Skirmish of Halkokari - British marines are repulsed by Finnish and Russian defenders of the warehouses. Carleby had been one of Europe's leading producers of tar and the British Royal Navy had been one of its biggest customers. With the outbreak of the Crimean War, however, British assets in the Russian empire were frozen. The tar had apparently already been paid for so the Royal Navy was either trying to take it by force or else trying to destroy the warehouses - depending upon which narrative one believes.

15. Hertz



type:car hire
location: billboard atop School Book Depository, Elm Street, Dallas, Texas
date: 22 November 1963
event: assassination of US President John Kennedy

16. Mandarin Duck



type: pleasure boat
location: South Lake, Gahshing, Chekiang Province, China
date: 23 July 1921
event: foundation of the Chinese Communist Party - the exact date of the founding is disputed because the delegates had met earlier in the month in house on the Rue Wantz in the French Concession of Shanghai, that meeting, however, had been broken up by police and so the delegates reconvened 50 miles to the south of the city on a hired pleasure boat

17. Pinzon



type: ship owners
location: Palos, Spain
date: 23 May 1492
event: decree by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that the town of Palos provide 2 caravels for use by Christopher Columbus on his forthcoming voyage

18. Sawyer Miller



type: advertising agency
location: Santiago da Chile
date: 05 October 1988
event: Chilean national plebiscite - the question as to whether President Augusto Pinochet was to remain in office for a further 8 years was put to the vote, somewhat unexpectedly the 'No' campaign won 56% to the 'Yes' campaign's 44%, the events are depicted in the fictionalised film 'No' (2012) - the film, however, writes the role of the US-based Sawyer Miller Group and their man in Santiago the UK's Mark Malloch Brown (now Lord Malloch-Brown) out of the story  
 
19. Shell



type: oil extraction
location: Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
date: 04 January 1993
event: Ogoni Day - mass demonstration by hundreds of thousands of people in Ogoniland against environmental degradation of the region by the oil extraction business, as a result the main focus of the demonstrations (namely Shell) became ever closely allied with the federal government and the latter responded by taking a hard line against the demonstrators culminating in increasing strife and violence    

20. Turners & Growers



type: produce company
location: Monahan Road, Auckland, New Zealand
date: 15 June 1959
event: the re-branding of Chinese gooseberries as 'kiwifruit' - it worked

P.S. Some are very famous while others are quite obscure.
P.P.S Clues pending.

Start with
10 - Farriner's bakery, where the Great Fire of London broke out.
12 - Ford's Theatre, site of Abe Lincoln's assassination.
14 - Halkokari - British defeat during the (oft-overlooked) Baltic campaign of the Crimean War.
Would Boland's be Boland's Mill one of the sites f the Easter Rising, mayhap?

Boland's bakery was a rebel base during the 1916 Rising alright, its claim to fame being where a young Eamon deValera fought and because their small group effectively kept an entire British Army garrison confined to Beggars Bush barracks for the duration.

Boston is hardly listed for the Tea Party there. A nasty business, but not business in the sense of the quiz, I don't think. The Boston Company was a leading player in the '49 Gold Rush though to what extent it was a company as opposed to a quasi-military outfit is hard to gauge given what they got up to there.

Aren't Sawyer Miller the slimeballs spin doctors you have to employ to become P_resident of the USA?

The only company called Farina I could find was the one that first produced Eau de Cologne.


Good to see you back, Vizzer.

Correct Gill on all counts and also Trike.

nordmann - that's right about Boland's bakery. The story (as popularly told) quite often only features the General Post Office.

The Boston in #3 does not refer to the Tea Party (although I had indeed thought about putting Davison Newman on the list as the owners of many of the tea chests that day). Neither does it refer to the 1849 Gold Rush. The company does, however, take its name from Boston, Massachusetts although the event did not take place in the United States.

P.S. One of the other companies listed was indeed in Boston in the 1770s.

no 16 - the only business connection I can think of is Mandarina Duck, the luggage people, but I'm flummoxed as to any histrorical connection.

That's one of the more obscure ones ferval. It was the venue for a small event which would, however, later prove to have a profound effect on a huge proportion of the world's population.

Could "Ford" be there because they made Kennedy's Lincoln?

17- Pinzon: the Pinzon brothers were merchants who captained the Pinta and Nina on Columbus' 1492 expedition.

That's exactly right Trike.

nordmann - #11 does refer to the Ford car manufacturer but not to Kennedy's assassination. That said - the assassination of JFK is indeed the event in question for one of the other companies listed.

Vizzer wrote:

That's exactly right Trike.

nordmann - #11 does refer to the Ford car manufacturer but not to Kennedy's assassination. That said - the assassination of JFK is indeed the event in question for one of the other companies listed.

Hertz had a massive great advertising sign on top of the Texas Book Depository in 1963.

6 Coeur: Coeur Mining ?? dumping waste in Alaska??


Really tough quiz, Vizz

Turners & Growers - weren't they the ones to start the trade in Chinese gooseberries (which they renamed "kiwi fruit"?)  About 1960ish?

Could Ford be the (re)invention of flowline assembly line plants? Just pre-Great War?

Well done Trike regarding Hertz - the iconic advertising sign without which no scale model of Dealey Plaza would be complete.

#6 Coeur does not relate to Alaska or to the dumping of mining waste but poison does come into it.

Spot on Gil re Turners & Growers.

#11 does refer to a Ford plant and a war but not the Great War.

No. 8. The only Drake's I know of is the mass-produced cake bakery company, "Drake's Cakes", from Brooklyn, New York, and I only know of them because the American neighbours where I lived 8 years ago were fans of their donuts and swiss rolls.

I'll admit I then attempted to cheat a bit by looking at their website (the company was founded in 1888 but is still in business) but despite finding the addresses of the old factories and head offices (1006 Wallabout Market, Brooklyn, and later 77 Clinton Street, Brooklyn) I'm still none the wiser. What's happened in Brooklyn over the past century? ... errr, well quite a lot probably.

Am I at least on the right company's track?

Not quite Meles.

This Drake's is not in New York but it is in North America. In fact it's in a neighbouring state to New York. The event took place before 1888. 
Drilling down through the other examples then #14 the Halkokari skirmish could be a bit of clue as it could be seen to have been a spur to this event.

Vizzer wrote:

Well done Trike regarding Hertz - the iconic advertising sign without which no scale model of Dealey Plaza would be complete.

#6 Coeur does not relate to Alaska or to the dumping of mining waste but poison does come into it.

Spot on Gil re Turners & Growers.

#11 does refer to a Ford plant and a war but not the Great War.

Could it be the use of slave labour by Ford Werke in WWII? That was probably 1940 (after the Germans had enough French POWs but before the US got dragged into the war)

Not in Germany but it is a Ford factory outside of the US. 1940 is a couple of years out.

"Couple of years out". Hmm. 1938 saw the completion of the Gorky or GAZ plant at Nizhny Novgorod (not sure if the city had been renamed by then. Most boring film - sorry, 3rd most boring film I've ever sat through was "The Childhood of Maxim Gorky".

I thought Turners and Growers was a purely NZ company, but I wasn't absolutely certain of that, and wouldn't have connected them with the kiwifruit change of name (or necessarily thought of that as globally important anyway).

Not the Soviet Union. 1938 would be a couple of years out but in the wrong direction Gil.

Caro - importance is of course a subjective concept. That said, re Turners & Growers then, like many New Zealand companies it was/is heavily export orientated. Marketing plays a huge role in this. In the world of marketing and branding then New Zealand and its produce has always punched above its weight in the world. One only has to think of such things as Anchor butter, New Zealand lamb, the Silver Fern emblem, the All-Blacks and even the haka to appreciate this.

With regard to kiwifruit - then the fact that this name is now almost universal, not only in the English-speaking world, but also in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hindi and Japanese etc is testament to the success of that decision taken by Turners & Growers' marketing department.

P.S. Clues added - (see above)

Vizzer wrote:

P.S. Clues added - (see above)

Think I've got one;

2 Boston: Boston Steamship Company,SS Ancona was the first ship through the Panama Canal, 15 August 1914.

3 Brewer: C Brewer & Co, one of the "Big Five" sugar companies in Hawaii who formed a Committee of Safety and overthrew the Hawaiian Monarchy on the 17th January 1893.

Bull's Tavern, Deptford : murder of Marlowe, 30 May 1593

Brewers - overthrow of Queen Lilinokalani, last Hawaiian monarch. January 17, 1893

Burghard - German printer who printed the first copies of The Communist Manifesto in London on February 21, 1848.

Coeur - Jaques Coeur was convicted (against all evidence) of poisoning the French Queen. He was forced to make public penance on the specified dateand a swingeing fine was exacted from him.

Coronation Cinema -first Indian feature film premiered was projected  3 May 1913 so the birth of Bollywood

Drake's - first oil well in the USA.

13 Gray's: John Gray's ropewalk in Boston, scene of a number of brawls between Colonials and Regulars in the run up to the Boston Massacre. The first person killed in the Massacre was a Samuel Gray, one of the employees at Gray's Ropewalk and described as a noted brawler.

Well done Trike and Gil - those are all correct. Just 3 left.

Mandarin Duck lake (aka  Jiaxing South Lake.)
1921 birth of Chinese Communist Party announced.

1993 Niger delta - Ogoni Peoples movement organises protests against Shell & Nigerian govt. Aftermath included execution of (inter alia) Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Have given up on Ford - worn myself to a shadow puzzling over that without ever taking off.

Henry Ford in 1938 received Germany's highest honour from Hitler for his past bank-rolling of the Nazis. In 1942 Ford started mass-production of Jeeps for the US army. None of these?

19 Shell: the Braer oil spill ?

Very well done Gil re Mandarin Duck - I thought that was going to be the hardest one. And well done too for Ogoni Day. I hadn't appreciated that there were actually 2 crude oil/environmental spillage stories side by side in early January 1993 so thanks Trike for pointing that out re Braer.

nordmann - not Ford in Germany or the US. I'm surprised that #11 Ford is causing so much difficulty as I had thought that the location of this event was more widely known than it obviously is.

Clue: As quoted in the 1973 Thames Television series The World At War - "General Percival, are you going to sullendah?"

15 Feb 1942. Abject surrender of Lt-gen Percival, Boardroom, Ford Factory, Singapore.

Maybe?

Definitely! And needless to say that 'going to sullendah' was not referring to the name of any village on the Malay peninsular.

That's the quiz complete - thanks to all who took part. 

Good one, thanks Vizzer!