“In order to hide the company’s sliding profitability and protect their share price, the WorldCom accounting team – led by the CEO and CFO – was recording expenses as investments, categories of expenditure that are treated very differently from a tax perspective. In fact, they are handled differently enough that the fraudulent approach they took turned a $395 million dollar loss and turned it into a stated profit of $130 million – and that was just for the first quarter of 2001.”

– Kelly Barner, Dial P for Procurement

In this edition of This Week in Business History, Kelly Barner remembers key innovations, inventions, and firsts that took place between July 19th and the 23rd. In our main story, we indulge in a retelling of the scandalous accounting practices used by WorldCom to protect their share price after the Dot.com bubble burst. Then we’ll learn about the first pedal bicycle designed in the U.S., the formation of the U.S. Veterans’ Administration, and celebrate a few business history birthdays.