Orville Redenbacher revolutionized the popcorn industry with his dedication to creating the perfect popcorn seed and his "do one thing and do it better than anyone" slogan, leading to the creation of the biggest popcorn brand that has been produced by Con Agra for 30 years.

The popcorn business and other old Hunt-Wesson businesses were sold in 1990 to agribusiness giant Conagra Brands. Hunt-Wesson, Inc.

Orville Redenbacher was born on a farm in Brazil, Indiana, in 1907. At 12, he began to grow and peddle his own popping corn, which allowed him to save money for college. He graduated from Perdue University with a degree in agronomy and as a member of Alpha Gamma Rho, an agriculture-oriented fraternity.

Orville Redenbacher grew up in Clay County, earning money by selling popcorn planted on the family farm. After earning a degree in agriculture from Purdue University, he worked as a teacher and county extension agent for almost a decade before being hired in January 1940 as manager of Princeton Farms.

By 1965, Orville and his business partner Charles Bowman perfect their popcorn hybrid - it is light and fluffy, leaves hardly any unpopped kernels, achieves a 44:1 ratio in volume of popped to unpopped corn, and, of course, tastes great.

Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.

By the mid 1970s, Redenbacher and Bowman had captured a third of the unpopped popcorn market. According to industry estimates, the brand, still the national leader in the $1 billion annual popcorn market, accounts for about 45 percent of the microwave market. These amazing successes are not all coming from luck.

Orville Wright, working with his brother Wilbur, made the first heavier-than-air, powered, controlled flight by man, leading the world into the aviation age.

Prestigious literary magazines like New York's Knickerbocker and the Yale Literary Magazine began referencing popcorn. By 1848, the word “popcorn” was included in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms. Bartlett claimed that the name was derived from “the noise it makes on bursting open.”

Orville Redenbacher's Ultimate Butter This is it, folks: The all-around best popcorn on our list - especially if you're all about the butter. The label reads popping corn, palm oil, salt, butter and natural flavor and colors. It's free of artificial preservatives, flavors and dyes to boot.

10 Interesting Popcorn Facts

• Interesting Fact #1: Popcorn can pop up to 30 times its size and up to 3 feet in the air.
• Interesting Fact #2: You can cook popcorn in butter, oil, air-pop, and even hot sand.
• Interesting Fact #3: Popcorn has been spotted throughout ancient North, Central, and South America.

In addition to being high in fiber, popcorn also contains phenolic acids, a type of antioxidant. In addition, popcorn is a whole grain, an important food group that may reduce the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension in humans. Whole grains are known to offer many health benefits to humans.