Timothy Dexter — The world’s luckiest idiot

Day 326 / 365

Some people are born businessman. There have been lots of people in history who had identified the right market and the right opportunities at the right time and made innumerable fortunes. Timothy Dexter was not one of these people. In fact, some would say that most of the things that he did were plain stupid. Yet the guy still managed to make a lot of money, all based on sheer luck.

His buisness ventures began when he married a rich widow. The dollar back then was pretty new as a currency and was considered worthless by most. Timothy bought loads of these dollars, just before the new government decided to use it as the official currency. This was his first lucky break.

His friends and rivals used to jokingly propose ridiculous buisness ideas to him and he would do them anyway. For instance, someone gave him the idea of exporting woolen mittens to the West Indies, an incredibly hot and humid place. On the way there, his ship encountered another merchant ship going to Siberia who was short on mittens, and they bought his entire lot!

Someone also proposed to him to ship coal to New Castle. New Castle back then was the biggest producer and exporter of coal, and it clearly didn’t need it anymore. But Timothy being the idiot that he is, still went ahead with the plan. He arrived at New Castle just as the coal miners had gone on strike. The large coal companies were helpless and agreed to buy his coal for an elevated price!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — What’s a good password?