8. LIU Post Campus was Purchased from the Daughter of a Cereal Tycoon

The LIU Post Campus is beautiful and that can partly be attributed to cereal, a lot of it. The original owner of the grounds was Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer, C.W. Post, who had somewhat of an unorthodox road to wealth. In 1891, C.W. Post had his second mental breakdown and spent some time in a sanatorium run by John Harvey Kellogg (yes, that’s the same Kellogg you are thinking of) and apparently loved the food so much that he decided to start a company based off it (the Post Cereal Company).

C.W. Post soon found a great deal of wealth in his entrepreneurial endeavors. However, his health eventually began to deteriorate. After finding out he had inoperable appendicitis, he killed himself in his Santa Barbara home. Following his death, his fortune and company were passed down to his daughter (and now cereal heiress), who was incredibly successful in her own right (one of her successes being the construction of Mar-a-Lago resort, now owned by Donald Trump). In 1951, Marjorie sold her estate in Brookville (known as Hillwood) to Long Island University for $200,000. The campus was named in honor of her father in 1954.