Ray Kroc

They paid it off in 1972.

The lenders made about 12 million.

McDonald's got to keep the half percent it had been paying the brothers on today's sales, and that half percent is worth billions.

But one thing stuck in Ray's throat.

At the last minute, the brothers insisted on keeping their original restaurant.

They'd agreed to sell everything, and now they were carving out an exception.

What a goddamn rotten trick, Ray wrote.

They went back on their promise, made on a handshake.

This is one of the reasons there was no love lost between Ray Kroc and the McDonald's brothers.

In fact, Ray would go on to open a McDonald's across the street from them and run them out of business.

In 1960, a former Marine Corps major named Lytton Cochran opened McDonald's store number 200 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

A few doors down was a competing hamburger chain.

The day Lytton opened, they announced a special, five hamburgers for 30 cents, six cents each.

They kept it up for a month.

Lytton wasn't selling hamburgers, but he noticed something strange.

He was still showing a profit.

Customers were buying the cheap burgers from the competition, then coming to his place for soft drinks and fries.

He figured he'd hang in there.

They couldn't keep it up forever.

Then things escalated.