For the last seven years, photographer Richard Renaldi has gone to various parts of America to take portraits of strangers that make them look like friends, family members, or even lovers.

The point of the project, Renaldi says, is to show that strangers — often people who would never have contact outside of this photo series — can share an intimate moment. To achieve that effect, Renaldi hauls around a massive vintage camera with a hood he can disappear under. He uses the cumbersome camera for three reasons: 1) it takes incredible photographs, 2) it's a curiosity for most people who have never seen anything like it in person, and 3) it reminds people that they are sitting for a portrait.

Renaldi says the project has gotten an overwhelmingly positive response.

"Even people with no experience with art or photography are able to get what I'm doing and see the underlying message," Renaldi said. "It’s an accessible concept ... This connects all of us."

Renaldi shared a number of photos from the project, and you can see the rest in his new book, "Touching Strangers."

When Renaldi began the project in 2007, he approached people at random and simply told them to touch each other in whatever way they felt comfortable. Renaldi met Jeremy (left), who had just come from a Kesha concert, in the barbecue tent at the Ohio State Fair. After Jeremy agreed to the portrait, Renaldi went out into the fair, where he found Matthew. Renaldi says there was a lot of tension between Jeremy and Matthew during the shoot, which is reflected in the photograph.As the project progressed, Renaldi started asking more of his subjects. He says it taught him an important lesson: "You’d be surprised what people are willing to do for you just by asking them. I was surprised that I could push a complete stranger over to my direction."Renaldi was at Dolores Park in San Francisco when he saw Alaina, whom he thought had "striking features." Renaldi knew he wanted to get a photo of strangers kissing so when Tom (left) and Charlie agreed to the shoot, he proposed the idea to Alaina. Tentatively, she said yes, and the men had no objections.Because Renaldi was trying to create a portrait of America, Renaldi says that he kept a list of the types of people he wanted to photograph. The list included people of different religions, professions, and body types.Renaldi was walking through downtown L.A. when he spotted Shawn, whom he thought looked like "a Jesus-type." After Shawn agreed to the shoot, Renaldi spotted Tari and Summer, a pair he described as stunning. All three were very comfortable during the shoot.For this picture, Renaldi wanted to find two strangers he could shoot in front of the Superior Sewing Equipment sign in Manhattan, which has been there for more than 50 years. To start, Renaldi stood on 6th Avenue around 6 p.m. so he could catch people as they left work. Elaine (left) and Arly came together in that pose on their own. When Renaldi was in Chicago, he decided to capture two young strangers. After enlisting Chris, a native of the Chicago suburbs, he found Amaira, a young girl from West Virginia. Amaira and her parents were very open to Renaldi's portrait idea.You can see Renaldi in action in the segment below from CBS News:

SEE ALSO: Gorgeous Photos Of Nomads Who Spend Nearly Their Entire Lives At Sea

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Most people love lobster. But the idea of cooking — and then eating — a whole, live lobster can be a bit intimidating.

What color should your lobster be? How can you tell if your lobster is fresh? What is the most humane way to kill a lobster?

Last summer, on a visit to Portland, Maine, I met with Melissa Bouchard, executive chef of Dimillo's on the Water, to get the answers to some of these questions. 

Bouchard, a Maine native, was named the Maine Restaurant Association’s first female Chef of the Year in 2013. Her kitchen kills close to 150 live lobsters every day to feed droves of summer visitors who funnel in from Commercial Street, the tourist hub in the city's Old Port district.  

The head chef and her staff showed me how to steam a Maine lobster and the right way to eat it. 

There are many species of lobster. However, the authentic Maine lobster, also known as American lobster, has five sets of legs and two large claws that are filled with meat.

Maine is particularly famous for its soft-shell lobsters, mature lobsters that have recently shed their shells. The "shedders" are easier to crack open and are said to have sweeter, more tender meat than hard-shell lobsters, although there is less meat inside a new-shelled lobster than a hard-shell lobster of the same size. Dimillo's only serves hard-shell lobsters.

When picking a lobster, go for one with the most energy. The color makes little difference. Maine lobsters are typically greenish, brown, or black in color — all lobsters will be bright red once they are cooked.

They were the kings of the late-1990s dot-com bubble ... until, of course, the bubble burst.

The dot-com crash was nearly 15 years ago. We thought it might be interesting to find out what happened to the startup founders who defined an era of unparalleled ambition and excess.

These were the guys who declined to buy a new company called "Google" for $1 million because it seemed too expensive. The guys who threw office parties at which transvestites served burgers from White Castle. The guys who complained that the "Concorde was a bit cramped."

It was a heck of a time.

Joe Kraus' eXcite got an offer to buy Google for $750,000, and passed.

The early search engine Excite (or "eXcite," as it was styled) was founded in 1994 by a group of Stanford University students, including Kraus.

In 1999, Excite had a chance to buy Google, according to MinyanVille. But Excite’s George Bell deemed the $1 million asking price too high. Bell also declined a second offer to take Google for $750,000.

The company went through a complicated skein of mergers and financing, culminating in a deal in which @Home paid $7.2 billion for the company in 1999. By 2001, it was bankrupt.

Kraus now works at Google Ventures, where he is an investor. Bell sold his mobile-ad startup Jumptap to Millennial Media last year, and he's now an investor at General Catalyst Partners.

Boo.com founder Ernst Malmsten once said, “After the pampered luxury of a Lear jet 35, Concorde was a bit cramped.”

Fashion retail web site Boo.com launched in 1999. The company burned $135 million of venture capital in 18 months and went bankrupt in 2000.

Malmsten re-emerged in 2011 as CEO of luxury goods company Lara Bohinc.

Razorfish founders Craig Kanarick and Jeff Dachis threw a party at which transvestites served 4,000 White Castle burgers to guests.

The 1997 new office-warming party at digital ad agency Razorfish, which allegedly featured belly dancers and Krispy Kreme donuts (in addition to trannies with burgers), is remembered as one of the defining excesses of the late 1990s. It's safe to say the legend is probably more apocryphal than true.

Craig Kanarick and Jeff Dachis took their company through an IPO, raising $48 million in 1999. Razorfish was eventually acquired as part of a package by Microsoft and then later sold to Publicis Groupe for $530 million.

Dachis moved on to found Dachis Group, a social media analytics company, which has since been acquired by social relationship platform Sprinklr. Dachis serves as a senior adviser there.

Kanarick is now the cofounder and CEO of Mouth, "the leading online destination for indie food."

Burt's Bees is marketed as a homespun natural brand from Durham, N.C.

Of course, the brand downplays that it was sold in 2007 for nearly $1 billion to mega-corporation Clorox.

Brands like Burt's Bees attract environmentally conscious consumers. They rely on being marketed as local and natural, but many people have no clue that these brands are part of globe-spanning corporations.

Quality often drops as a result. 

"It's very common that when an organic food brand is acquired, that the new parent corporation reduces its commitment to organic ingredients and seeks out cheaper substitutes,"says Michigan State University professor Philip Howard, who studies the food system. 

We found 19 brands that you think are small-scale artisans — but are really the latest in corporate crunchiness.

Reporting by Kim Bhasin and Patricia Laya, with additional reporting by Alison Griswold.

Mars bought Seeds of Change for an undisclosed amount in 1997.

Seeds of Change was founded as an agriculture company specializing in rare and organically grown seeds back in 1989. After candy giant Mars bought the company in 1997, Seeds of Change was allowed to keep running mostly as it did before.

As part of its green-friendly mission, Seeds of Change operates a research farm near El Guique, New Mexico, along the river valley flood plain of the Rio Grande. Originally located by the Gila Wilderness in the southwestern part of the state, the company relocated after purchasing its new property in 1996.

Hain Celestial bought Garden of Eatin' in 1998.

Garden of Eatin' makes some of the most delicious chips around — the spicy-savory crunch of the Red Hot Blues is without comparison. 

"Our all natural chips and snacks are bursting with the highest quality corn, seeds, and spices,"the company says. "Best of all they're as hearty as they are uniquely original."

Organic conglomerate Hain Celestial couldn't resist the crunch, nabbing the company back in 1998. 

General Mills bought Cascadian Farm for an undisclosed amount in 1999.

Cascadian Farm used to be famous for its cereals with "no added sugar." A few years ago, this label disappeared from its boxes.

A Cascadian Farm customer said her children noticed a funny new taste in their Purely O's. It turned out the cereal had tripled its sugar count to 3 grams from 1 gram in 2009.

The move was condemned by Cascadian Farm customers, who felt duped and complained the new cereal tasted "dreadful" and looked "disgusting." Some time later, the company posted a note on the back of Purely O's boxes saying it had returned to a recipe with just 1 gram of sugar.

If you're not entirely comfortable speaking in public, then giving a PowerPoint in front of your colleagues or clients can be a great source of anxiety.

And if you're not confident as you create your slideshow, the final product can make you seem like a real amateur.

To help you engage your audience instead of putting it to sleep, the experts at SOAP Presentations in São Paulo, Brazil, compiled the most common mistakes that you can easily fix.

We're running it here with SOAP's permission.

Another week, another long list of news stories about how hackers have gotten into our bank accounts or stolen  passwords.

But, as alarming as that is, we're guessing that you didn't change all your passwords, did you? That's because changing passwords is hard and remembering new passwords is even harder. And, even if you did, the next big hack means you'd have to do it all over again.

It's time to get smarter about your passwords by using a password manager app. Such an app makes it ridiculously easy to create unguessable passwords and change them whenever the need strikes.

One of the most popular and trusted apps is called LastPass.

We're going to walk you through how to install and use it. If you opt to follow these instructions, for 30 minutes or less of your time, and $12 or less of your money, you'll never have to worry about passwords ever again.

Go to the LastPass website and download the app.

This screen should appear on your computer.

If you're new to LastPass, you need to create a new account.

One of the main reasons people go to college and graduate school is to find a high-paying job when they're done.

But a college education and a prestigious job do not necessarily mean you'll be raking in the cash.

Some of these gigs, like being an architect or an optometrist, pay well below what you might expect.

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the mean salary of full-time civilian workers, we've picked out some of the most prestigious jobs that have surprisingly low earnings.

Optometrists

Average annual earnings: $111,640

Job description: They perform eye exams and make just a fraction as much as some medical professionals. For comparison, the average physician earns $191,880 a year, and dentists, who undergo a similar amount of training, earn $168,870. 

Educational requirements: A bachelor's degree is required, followed by a four-year stint in optometry school to earn an O.D. A residency sometimes follows that for those who want to pursue a particular specialty. 

Biomedical engineers

Average annual earnings: $93,960

Job description: These engineers work on building solutions for problems in biology and medicine.

Educational requirements: Some undergraduate programs offer degrees in biomedical or biomechanical engineering, but other paths include a more general engineering degree and a master's focusing on biomedical applications. 

Chemists

Average annual earnings: $77,740

Job description: Chemists study the properties, structures, and reactions of substances and develop new products or processes for making them.

Educational requirements: A bachelor's is the minimum, but research jobs require a master's or Ph.D.

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The 27th annual Burning Man — a crazy, weeklong festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada — is well underway.

In honor of the Labor Day weekend festival, a new book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the elaborate art structures displayed throughout the past years of the event.

The book, by author Jennifer Raiser with photography by Scott London and Sidney Erthal, is the only authorized collection of the best of Burning Man art with incredible photography.

The book contains more than 200 striking photos and interviews with the artists about their inspiration and how they transport such large structures to the middle of the desert.

With permission from Race Point Publishing, we have 12 of the stunning images here.

Every August, over 50,000 people gather to celebrate artistic expression and social freedom in Nevada's barren Black Rock Desert. In extreme elements, over 200 works of art are created and intended to delight, provoke, involve, or amaze.

New book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the many art pieces in the desert, like this piece titled "Evolution Man," which was made entirely of irregularly shaped wooden triangles intended to represent the chaos at the heart of life.

There is ritual surrounding every aspect of the Man’s creation and destruction. He is traditionally 40 feet tall, standing on a tall wooden base that participants can enter and climb. The blueprints for his construction are a closely guarded secret, provided only to the carefully selected crew, largely volunteers, who gather at Burning Man’s Nevada work ranch in June for the process of carefully cutting, assembling, joining, and sanding of the Man with a level of craftsmanship befitting an antique piece of fine furniture.

(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)

Artist Marco Cochrane's "Truth is Beauty" 2013 structure of the female body was held up with steel and mesh.

Cochrane credits the open-minded culture of Burning Man for inspiring the sculptures. He says: “I’m trying to demystify nudity. I see how free women are on the playa, how they can possess a playful energy here that they cannot do in real life.”

(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)

Lobster boat captain Craig Stewart and sternman Tim Lovett start work before sunrise and haul traps for hours on end.

Making a living is harder now than ever before, as overhead costs for fuel, equipment, and bait steadily climb, while unprecedented lobster landings over the last several years have sent prices tumbling.

"We're struggling," said Stewart, a third-generation lobsterman who fishes off the coast of Portland."If I come in with 600 pounds, people will see that I made $1000 for that day. They don't see that I just replaced the engine for $30,000 or that I paid over $300 for bait."

Stewart is one of Maine's 5,900 licensed lobster harvesters, who together haul in roughly 80% of U.S. landings of American lobster, worth more than $300 million.

To experience the life of a Maine lobsterman last summer we headed to Portland, Maine and spent a day aboard Stewart's 36-foot working lobster boat.

Around 4:30 a.m., sternman Tim Lovett leaves Holyoke Wharf in South Portland to pick up captain Craig Stewart from Long Island in Casco Bay, near Portland.

By 6 a.m., Craig is at the helm. He begins zigzagging in and out of buoys to locate his traps.

Each lobster boat is limited to 800 traps as part of Maine law. A portion of the traps are hauled and set each day.

Warren Buffett turned 84 years old on Saturday.

And even at that age, the billionaire "Oracle of Omaha" continues to be involved in some of the biggest investment plays in the world.

Buffett is undoubtedly the most successful investor in history. His investment philosophy is no secret, and he has repeatedly shared bits and pieces of it through a lifetime of quips and memorable quotes.

His brilliance is timeless, and we find ourselves referring back to them over and over again.

We compiled a few of Buffett's best quotes from his TV appearances, newspaper op-eds, magazine interviews, and of course his annual letters.

Buying a stock is about more than just the price.

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

Source: Letter to shareholders, 1989

You don't have to be a genius to invest well.

"You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ."

Source: Warren Buffett Speaks, via msnbc.msn

But, master the basics.

"To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these. That, of course, is not the prevailing view at most business schools, whose finance curriculum tends to be dominated by such subjects. In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices."

Source: Chairman's Letter, 1996

They say the early bird catches the worm, and nowhere is this old adage more true than in business.

Waking up early allows executives like AOL's Tim Armstrong and Pepsi's Indra Nooyi to get a head start on the day, knocking out tasks before the rest of the world is out of bed.

The extra time also gives people the chance to work out and do some of their most valuable creative thinking.

Whether they use the time to catch up on email or take their kids to school, these executives all make the most of their mornings.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong

The former Google executive told The Guardian that he was "not a big sleeper" and wakes up at 5 or 5:15 every morning to work out, read, tinker with AOL's products, and answer emails. Armstrong has a driver who takes him to work every day, allowing him to get things done throughout his hour-long commute.

Apple CEO Tim Cook

The tech titan is known for getting up early. He starts sending out company emails around 4:30 a.m., according to Gawker's Ryan Tate. By 5, he can be found in the gym.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra

Like her predecessor Daniel Akerson, GM's current chief executive is an early riser. According to a New York Times profile, she was regularly at the office by 6 a.m., and that was before she even became CEO.

Professional social situations can be awkward. And, unfortunately, many people wind up making fools of themselves because they don’t understand that etiquette rules in business differ slightly from those in standard social settings. 

In her book "The Essentials Of Business Etiquette," Barbara Pachter writes about the specific rules people need to understand in order to conduct and present themselves appropriately in professional social settings.  

Here are the most important tips on how to introduce yourself, how to dress, and what to order at restaurants from Pachter's book.

Always stand when you're being introduced to someone.

"Standing helps establish your presence. You make it easy for others to ignore you if you don’t stand. If you are caught off guard and cannot rise, you should lean forward to indicate that you would stand, if you could."

Source: "The Essentials Of Business Etiquette"

Always say your full name.

In a business situation, you should use your full name, but you should also pay attention to how others want to be introduced.

If your name is too long or difficult to pronounce, Pachter says you should consider changing or shortening it. Or you should consider writing down the pronunciation of your name on a business card and giving it to others.

Source: "The Essentials Of Business Etiquette"

Always initiate the handshake if you’re the higher-ranking person or host.

In today's workplace, the host or the higher-ranking person, regardless of gender, should extend their hand first, she writes. "If the higher-ranking person fails to do so immediately — often because of gender confusion — the lower-ranking person should extend his or her hand without missing more than a beat."

Either way, the handshake must happen. "In the United States, the handshake is the business greeting. If you want to be taken seriously, you must shake hands and shake hands correctly."

Source: "The Essentials Of Business Etiquette"

Apple will reportedly release a new wearable computing device this year.

It will be Apple's first major new product in an entirely new product category since it released the iPad in 2010. In the four years since the iPad launched, a lot has changed for Apple. 

With Steve Jobs dead, this new gadget will be Apple's first opportunity to show that it can flourish without its visionary founder. As former Apple ad man Ken Segal put it, the release of this product will be new CEO Tim Cook's chance to etch his name in history. 

Of course, the flip side of that is that if this product is a flop, then Apple skeptics will be out in force, saying the company is toast without Jobs. 

A lot of companies have tried to introduce smart watches recently — Samsung, Motorola, LG — and yet none have really gained any traction. 

Will Apple be different? Or will this be the first major flop from Apple since Jobs returned to the company in the late nineties? 

Ahead of Apple's announcement, here's everything we know — or think we know — about what Apple is planning.

What will it be called? Everyone is saying "iWatch" which sounds likely. Apple has trademarked "iWatch" in five countries. There's also talk that it could be called the "iBand," which also makes sense if it's just a wearable fitness device.

See here.

We expect it to run on a modified version of iOS, Apple's mobile operating system.

It will have a 2.5-inch rectangular screen. Or maybe it will be round.

So far, there is no definitive answer about what the iWatch's screen will look like. 

Reuters reported, "Apple will introduce a smartwatch with a display that likely measures 2.5 inches diagonally and is slightly rectangular."

But Brian Blair of Rosenblatt Securities was in Asia and said it will have a round face.

Who to believe? In general, we would side with Reuters, which has a track record of being right. But a 2.5-inch screen would be big and bulky. A round face makes sense since Apple has started making more round icons in iOS, its mobile operating system. 

For now, this is a toss up! We lean rectangle since it makes more sense. 

World Wrestling Entertainment majority owner, chairman, and CEO Vince McMahon grew up in an 8-foot-wide trailer in North Carolina, where he did not meet his father, a wrestling promoter, until the age of 12.

From those humble origins, McMahon, who turned 69 earlier this week, rose to become the head of a billion-dollar company. In growing WWE from the regional organization it was when he took over to the global empire it is today, McMahon has relied on an incredible work ethic that is unmatched in the wrestling business.

For more than three decades, he has lived, breathed, and sometimes bled WWE, both in the boardroom and on television, where he plays a fictionalized version of himself.

He doesn't believe in sickness.

Employees feeling under the weather while working at WWE are unlikely to get much sympathy from the company's CEO.

Former WWE creative team members Vince Russo and David Lagana both write that McMahon has been known to tell glassy-eyed employees that "there is no such thing as sick."

"Vince is a workaholic, and if anything gets in the way of his work, it makes him angry," Lagana writes.

It was impossible to beat him into the office in the morning or outlast him at night.

Vince Russo, who worked for McMahon as the then-WWF's head writer during the company's late '90s boom period, recalls that McMahon basically lived at the company's Stamford, Connecticut, office.

If Russo got in at 7 a.m., McMahon's car would already be there, and if he stayed until 10 p.m., McMahon's car would still be there.

"In other words — the guy just never left the office!!!" Russo writes in a piece for What Culture.

He barely ever sleeps.

In a 2012 interview, McMahon tells Bloomberg Businessweek that he sleeps just four hours a night.

"I don't like to sleep," McMahon says. "I'm missing something when I'm sleeping."

Before they were famous, Hollywood's elite were just normal, pizza-faced kids trying to make it through high school.

Well, that's not entirely true.

Tom Cruise studied at a Catholic seminary for a year before dropping out to pursue other interests (AKA "women"). Meanwhile, brainiac Natalie Portman juggled the title role in Broadway's "The Diary of Anne Frank" all while competing in the nation's most elite high school research competition.

See who else might surprise you.

Aaron Paul was an avid snowboarder. Just before high school, he took a career aptitude test and matched “the arts.” “There wasn’t a room to go to ask questions for that,” Paul said.

Sources: ESPN, Vulture

Jennifer Aniston’s name topped many playbills during her four years at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the school that inspired “Fame.”

Sources: Biography.com, Wikipedia

Ben Affleck said he and buddy Matt Damon would engage in such extracurricular activities as “underage drinking, pot smoking, and all the attendant shenanigans,” and sometimes plot their paths to Hollywood.

Sources: People.com

Since the inception of the modern Olympics, there have been 49 winter and summer games held in 41 different cities around the globe. Some were great successes. Others, not so much.

Researchers have known for years that cities that host large sporting events like the Olympics generally spend more money and make less than anticipated. And investing in an Olympic Games won't necessarily lead to long-term economic growth or improved infrastructure.

Photographers and artists Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit set out to document what exactly happens when the games are over, and discovered varying answers.

Pack and Hustwit explored and photographed relics and remains of once-new Olympic features in 13 cities. Their photos, collected in a new book entitled "The Olympic City," show the varied remnants of Olympic Games gone by. 

"We're interested in the idea of government-approved spending — and these are huge amounts of money — to build massive structures, some of it temporary, all to host an event that will only last a couple of weeks ... Are [the people] benefiting from having been a part of the Olympics? Are the games a point of pride or regret?" Pack explains.

Some places faired well, standing the test of time by adapting to new roles. Other structures fell to shambles after years of disuse. Both aspects, rebirth from ingenuity and death from poor planning, are documented in the series, which acts as a interesting behind-the-scenes look at the games we know and love.

Many pieces of architecture originally created for an Olympic event have been gracefully integrated into the landscape. Here, the Montjuïc Communications Tower still stands in Olympic Park in Barcelona. Created for the 1992 Summer Games, the structure was built to beam TV coverage out to the world and was meant to look like an arm holding an Olympic torch. Today, it continues to send out TV signals and remains a striking part of the city skyline.

Other structures were repurposed. These eighteen 16-story buildings were created to house athletes at the the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, though only a few of them were used, due to the US-led boycott of the games. They have since been made into permanent apartments for state employees.

Similarly, the Olympic Village from the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics was also converted into full time residences, though they have recently fallen into slight disrepair.

A career doesn't move linearly, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman famously advised— it can ratchet up suddenly with one critical insight, meeting, or opportunity. 

You call it a big break. 

Every success story has one.

Even luminaries like Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Jobs, and Howard Schultz had a moment where the path of their future clicked into focus. 

Here are the big breaks that helped these execs build 10-digit fortunes.

Richard Branson discovered a singer who became a huge success.

When Richard Branson was 16, he started a magazine called Student. But his big break came six years later when he opened a recording studio and brought in a singer named Mike Oldfield. 

Oldfield released "Tubular Bells," a mega-single that would stay on the U.K. charts for 247 weeks. 

"On the back of that, we built a record company,"he told us, "and one thing led on to another from there."

Henry Ford impressed the mayor of Detroit.

In 1898, Henry Ford won the loyalty of Detroit mayor William C. Maybury after he built a carburetor, for which Maybury awarded him a patent.

Maybury would prove instrumental in helping Ford become an automobile maker. 

"Maybury's support, combined with Ford's bold ideas and charisma, helped assemble a group of investors who contributed some $150,000 to establish the Detroit Automobile Company in early August 1899,"says History.com. 

That allowed Ford to quit his day job at the Edison Illuminating Company — and found the companies that would make the first mass production cars. 

Bill Gates landed an IBM contract.

In 1980, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard and was leading a tiny company called Microsoft that was trying to worm its way into the nascent personal computer industry. 

He — and the company — soon got a giant break, in the form of IBM. 

Big Blue wanted to bring a cheap personal computer to market fast. It contracted Microsoft to provide the operating system. At the time, it didn't have one to sell, but soon cobbled one together. 

Aug. 31 marks the 17th anniversary of the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales and the "Queen of People's Hearts."

The year of her death, 1997, was highlighted by trips to Angola and Bosnia in her high-profile campaign against land mines and Mediterranean holidays with her sons and companion, Emad Mohamed al-Fayed.

Seventeen years after her death, Princess Diana is remembered for her compassion and commitment to her causes. These photos display her endless supply of charm and generosity.

Lady Diana Spencer as a toddler on the Norfolk, England, property where she grew up. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her father, an earl, won custody.

Riding in style at the Park House in 1962. Her family rented the property, owned by Queen Elizabeth II, and arranged occasional playdates with Prince Albert and Prince Edward when Diana was young.

She kept a Shetland pony, named Souffle, at her mother's Scotland home.

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