He was born into a family of Mennonite farmers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1857. He left school in the fourth grade to work as an apprentice to a printer for a while but found his calling when he began work as an apprentice to a candymaker.

When he turned 18 he went to Philadelphia, then Chicago, and finally back east to New York, opening candy shops that quickly failed until he went back home to Lancaster, where he opened a caramel company that finally took off.

But his real success came when he bought a German chocolate-making machine. Within three years, his chocolate candy became his big seller, so he sold the caramel company and moved to a small town 35 miles away, where he opened what became the world’s largest and most modern chocolate factory.

His biggest dream though was to build a nice hometown with houses, tree-lined streets and manicured lawns. So around his factory, he opened a park and added amusement rides, a swimming pool and a ballroom. It made the town a major tourist attraction.

In appreciation, the town decided to change its name in his honor. The man’s name – Milton Hershey. The town - Hershey, Pennsylvania. Today, the company is the largest producer of chocolate in North America.

Its main plant uses about 700,000 quarts of milk each day, the storage silos at the plant hold 90 million pounds of cocoa beans, the company puts out 60 million Hershey kisses each day and Hershey Chocolate is the largest single user of almonds in the country.

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