Clarence Birdseye (1886–1956), the inventor and pioneer in frozen foods, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 9 December 1886. Until he died on 8 October 1956, Birdseye never came in from the cold. According to family legend, an ancestor saved the life of an English queen by shooting an attacking hawk through the eye, thereby earning the name “Birds Eye.” Clarence Birdseye attended Amherst College but was forced to leave school for lack of money. As a struggling student, Birdseye recounted the day he passed a spring hole and saw thousands of small frogs. He wondered what the frogs were good for, so he sold them to the Bronx Zoo for $115. This ability to look at the familiar and see opportunity was a creative trait Birdseye never lost.
