JP  Morgan (left) and John D. Rockefeller (middle)

John Davison Rockefeller, a financial genius with a talent for double entry bookkeeping and bribery, founded the Standard Oil Company. By 1896, Rockefeller shed all of his policy involvement in the day-to-day affairs of Standard Oil but retained his nominal title as president until 1911 when Standard Oil was convicted in Federal Court of monopolistic practices and broken up. However, he kept his stock which was a principal source of his wealth. 

It was often said that Rockefeller had the best state and United States senators that money could buy. His business deals and payoffs were a national scandal, but by the time he was thirty-three, Rockefeller owned ninety percent of all the American refineries, and all of the main pipelines and oil cars of the Pennsylvania railroad, and was the richest man and first billionaire in America.
By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion. snd it is estimated that his personal fortune was equal to 1.53% of the total U.S. annual GDP in his day,

To celebrate the financier's birthday, we suggest renting a DVD of the fascinating documentary Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement  (2007) in which there are rare film clips of Rockefeller and scores of other current and historical figures, and enjoy it with Oysters Rockefeller named for him in 1899 by New Orleans restaurateur and chef Jules Alciatore who founded Antoine's. The dish was a result of a shortage of escargot being shipped from France to the United States. Jules created an oyster dish as a substitute, an unusual choice because oysters were not very popular at that time, but they were plentiful. Jules called the new dish Oysters Rockefeller because he wanted an appropriate term to symbolize the richness of the sauce. Oysters Rockefeller are now served in nearly every major restaurant in the city, although Antoine's has always guarded the secret of the sauce and claims that no other restaurant has been able to successfully duplicate the recipe.

There are many knock-off versions of  the original Oysters Rockefeller, many of which use spinach.  However, there was no spinach in the original Antoine's sauce. Spinach was one of the alleged ingredients intended to mislead the competition.  Another ingredient in the original recipe was absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit, also known as "wormwood" and "the Green Fairy." Absinthe had been banned since 1925 in most European nations and the United States because of exaggerated claims of psychoactive properties and causing blindness. However, there is no medical evidence that it is any more dangerous than any other liquor or spirit. A revival of absinthe began in the 1990s, when countries in the European Union began to reauthorize its manufacture and sale. Pernod is substituted for absinthe in the following recipe which also makes use of a food processor which was not around when Jules created the recipe.

One other food associated with Rockefeller is human milk. Towards the end of his life, his digestive system was shot and he lived primarily on milk. However, the imperious Johnny chose to have his milk produced by several wet nurses that he kept on his household staff..