Venezuela’s National Day

Anniversary of:
• the launch of famous luncheon meat Spam (1937)
• the premiere of Seinfield (originally titled The Seinfeld Chronicles) (1989)
• the founding of Amazon by Jeff Bezos (1994)

AMZON FACTS:

Amazon was almost given a completely different name.

The company was originally called Cadabra, like the magic term “abracadabra.” But Jeff Bezos’ lawyer told him that the magic reference was too obscure, and when you say it out loud, “cadabra” could be mistaken for “cadaver.” Eventually, they came up with the name Amazon, a reference to the river in South America. The idea was that their selection of books would be vast and wide, just like the world’s largest river. They did have many other names in mind and still own one of the domains. If you type in Relentless.com in your browser, you will be redirected to Amazon.com.

 The company started out selling books.

When Jeff Bezos first started the company in 1995, it was just a bookstore run out of his home garage. So when Amazon opened their first physical bookstore in 2015, it was staying true to the roots of the company.

Amazon hasn’t paid federal taxes in two years.

Amazon’s profits nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018, but the company hasn’t paid federal taxes in two years. This is completely legal. The US government allows companies certain tax breaks and deductions. One policy, called the R&D tax credit, encourages companies to spend its profits on research and development. From 2005 to 2014, Amazon received over $600 million in tax breaks to build warehouses in certain states. It received another $147 million in tax breaks for building data centers around the country.