January 16

Andre Michelin was born on the 16th in 1853. In 1900, Andre and his brother Edouard started a company to manufacture tires. It would not be inappropriate to call Andre the Michelin Man, although he wasn’t completely white and puffier than a marshmallow. In 1900, Andre began publication of the Michelin Guide, which not only encouraged people to travel everywhere by car but also provided very useful information concerning where to go in your car and where to sleep and eat once you got there. This was a rather sly way of generating business for the tire-manufacturing arm of the Michelin Empire.