The Shell Oil Company used to be a company that sold sea shells !

Marcus Samuel was a London antique dealer who discovered a demand for sea shells from the Far East. He started importing the shells, and eventually created an import/export business that would eventually become “Shell Transport and Trading Company”. Marcus Samuel passed the company to his two sons, Marcus Samuel Jr. and the unfortunately named Samuel Samuel. In the advent of the internal combustion engine in the 19th Century, the Samuel brothers decided to get into the oil shipping business. For decades Shell’s business primarily consisted of buying oil in Russia and shipping it across the world. In 1907, Shell merged with Royal Dutch Petroleum to become Royal Dutch Shell, which is now one of the largest oil companies in the world.