Did Ya Know? Who Funded the New Yorker?
DYK? The seed money for the first issues of The New Yorker came from yeast. Not literal yeast but the heir of a yeast fortune.
Harold Ross was already a veteran journalist the early 1920s when he decided to create a humor magazine with a urban sensibility even though he didn't have a dime to do it. He approached Raul H. Fleischmann, scion to the Fleischman's Yeast (and later baking mixes and margarine) family about the venture. He agreed.
Much as Ross would spend the remainder of his life editing The New Yorker, Raul Fleischmann would spend the rest of his giving the magazine cash, nearly his entire inheritence worth, when it needed it.
Without him or his family's yeast, America's most beloved and respected magazine would probably not exist. No the next time you luxuriate over a great piece from this even greater periodical (and I like to do in the bathtub. And on the toilet), thank Mr. Fleischmann. And his yeast.