6 Global Corporations Started by Their Founder's Shitty Luck

There are a million self-help books out there reminding us that success is all about bouncing back from our failures. We're kind of sick of hearing it, to be honest.

But what most people don't realize is how many successful businesses only happened because of a sudden disaster. These are the global empires that only struck gold because fate forced them to at gunpoint.

The Company:

Coca-Cola

In the Beginning:

Have you ever gotten bored and decided to try to come up with the perfect drink? And did you snap your fingers and say, "Aha! I'll take some booze and mix it with cocaine!"

If so, you're probably due for one hell of an intervention. But if it was 1885 and your name was John Pemberton, you were about to become the father of a freaking worldwide beverage empire. Pemberton was a pharmacist living in Columbus, Georgia and to be fair, alcohol laced with cocaine was already a thing (called coca wine).

If you're thinking to yourself that combining a stimulant and a depressant into one concoction isn't the greatest of ideas, you obviously didn't grow up in the 19th century.

And aren't familiar with Sparks, the energy beer.

Pemberton's product was a resounding success; the ads for Pemberton's French Wine Coca said it was for "scientists, scholars, poets, divines, lawyers, physicians, and others devoted to extreme mental exertion."

Apparently ads weren't charged by the letter back then, because we suspect it would've been cheaper to write, "BOOZE: Now With COCAINE." That shit kind of sells itself.

The Disaster:

Prohibition happened. Alcohol was suddenly illegal. But, instead of responding in the hornswoggling fashion his neighbors did, Pemberton instead removed the alcohol from his coca wine and replaced it something people like almost as much: gigantic amounts of sugar. Coca-Cola was born.

"Come gents, let us imbibe sugar water and enjoy this so-called 'jazz' music."

Pemberton claimed his new drink cured "morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence."

"I say, either I'm piss proud right now or this tonic has made me one randy bull."

With alcohol quality and quantity slowly dwindling, Pemberton and his sweet ambrosia filled the gap ... mainly because his drink still contained cocaine. Pemberton wasn't an idiot, he was a pharmacist. Knowing people would come back for that high, he advertised his drink as a temperance beverage--a drink to ease people off of booze--and the rest is soft drink history.

As for Pemberton himself, well, maybe he should have gotten an intervention: A crippling addiction to morphine forced him to sell off all rights to the company a few years later.

The Company:

Nintendo

In the Beginning:

The year was 1889, and instead of playing video games, children worked in coal mines until they died. In those days, "Nintendo Koppai" was just a company that made playing cards, devoid of Italian plumbers and sword-wielding elves, yet very popular among the Japanese mafia. Over the years they branched out into other area such as toys, instant rice, taxi cabs and... love hotels.

Yes, that's a Hello Kitty-themed sex dungeon. Every Japanese home has one.

What's a love hotel? It's exactly what it sounds like: A place that rents out rooms by the hour, visited by couples looking to get their bone on--often with money changing hands afterward. Courtesy of Nintendo. These were also places that then-President of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi would frequent constantly. Nothing shows off a product's quality better than the company president personally endorsing it... over and over and over again.

Booyah!

But playing cards were where Nintendo made its real money. And people will always want to play cards, right?

The Disaster:

The 1964 Olympics.

The Olympics themselves weren't a disaster. But they were held in Tokyo and they did change the culture of Japan. You see, fads are funny, unpredictable things. For instance, little mustaches as wide as your nose used to be really popular--a fashion that utterly died with nothing more than one brutal dictator.

What's the opposite of trendsetter? Hitler.

Well, in the 1960s, playing cards were the Hitler mustaches of Japan. When the Olympics came to Tokyo, the games drew a lot of international attention and Japan was trying to put its best face forward. Card games were kind of seen as low-brow and childish, and suddenly they weren't cool any more. Nintendo's sales plummeted.

You'd think this would drive all of the former card players into Love Hotels instead, but it was not to be--Nintendo's other enterprises went down along with the card business (their toy line, for instance, was getting crushed by companies like Bandai).

Then, one day Hiroshi Yamauchi visited the production floor and saw an employee playing with a toy mechanical arm he had made on his own. Yamauchi loved it, and ordered the company's resources thrown into selling it, and other electronic toys and gadgets. This, combined with their love of the skanky side of human sexuality, produced toys like the Love Tester:

Step 1: Grow non-Hitler mustache.

At this point, Nintendo pretty clearly faced a fork in the corporate road, each path leading the dominance of a cutting edge industry: "video games" or "high-end dildos." We know which one they chose, but we'll never know how long they agonized over the decision.

The Company:

Lego

In the Beginning:

Ole Kirk Christiansen was a carpenter working in Denmark in the 1890s. At the time he was building houses for local farmers, and did this up until his workshop was burned down by his sons in 1924.

Kids weren't fucking around back then.

Rather than throw his children into the Baltic Sea, as Scandinavians are known to do, Christiansen saw this as an opportunity to not only rebuild his workshop, but build it bigger and better. Additionally, he had plans to expand his business. He wouldn't let one stroke of bad luck keep him down!

The Disaster:

The Great Depression took this as a challenge. And no, the depression wasn't just an American thing, in case you were wondering. Our carpenter was forced to downsize in every way possible, from staff to even the products he built. No longer was he making full-blown houses and furniture, but smaller versions. Much smaller.

Christiansen got into toys. Some say he came up with this idea on his own, others say he was told to do so by his social worker. Given that Vikings used to inhabit the region of Denmark, we're going with the former: No one tells a Viking what to do.

Soon after, plastic became available and in 1949, Christiansen's company ("Lego") started making little interlocking bricks. Which, in true Viking fashion, was an idea pillaged from the British.

He would be holding an axe right now but we can't find one. Even though we just saw one in the box five minutes ago.

That was more than 400 billion Lego bricks ago. Lego pieces now outnumber humans 62 to one.