America’s great tycoons of the 19th century were known as robber barons. They got this name because they ruthlessly stripped the country of its natural resources. They made vast fortunes in oil, timber, land, mining, agriculture and transport. The most famous robber baron of them all was John Rockefeller. From this, we get the phrase “as rich as Rockefeller” which means someone has unimaginable wealth. Rockefeller made his fortune in oil and his legacy lives on in the world’s oil industry today.
However, the next richest robber baron to Rockefeller was the much less well-known William Clark. Clark made his fortune in copper in the mountain state of Montana. Today, he is far more famous for his daughter than he is for the way he made his original fortune. Clark’s daughter was called Huguette. She hit the headlines in 2011 when she died at the age of 104. But it was not her age that made her
so remarkable. Huguette inherited her father’s vast fortune. When she died, her wealth stood at US $500 million – despite the fact that she seemed to have made no effort at all to conserve or grow her fortune. But it is not even this amazing amount of money that made Huguette so remarkable. It was the way she managed to retreat from the world for the last 80 years of her life! Huguette Clark is perhaps the world’s most complete rich recluse. She makes Howard Hughes - up until now, the byword for eccentric reclusiveness - look like an amateur.
Do you know the British words for these?
Elevator, cookie, apartment, trunk, parking lot, fries, potato chips, (baby) pacifier, garbage collector, main street, truck, math, sidewalk, gas, eraser.
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