Timothy Dexter (1747-1806). This American businessman, who lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts, had not even received a high school education and worked as a farm laborer from a young age. He became rich by investing in the depreciated Continental currency during the American Revolutionary War. Only the state of Massachusetts paid its own notes at par after the war.
All the other deals that made him famous were just as peculiar. For example, he sent bed warmers to the West Indies where they were sold as ladles to the local molasses industry, and Asian merchants bought the wool mittens he sent to be sold in tropical areas and exported them to Siberia. He saved Newburyport's stray cats from extermination by selling them to the Caribbean Islands, where they were unexpectedly in great demand because a rat infestation.
According to one legend, he was jokingly advised to sell coal to Newcastle, a town famous for its own coal reserves. The deal was again successful because of a Newcastle miners' strike.
