Henry Ford poured millions of dollars into building a utopian corporate town deep in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest simply because he absolutely hated buying rubber from the British.

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Henry Ford poured millions of dollars into building a utopian corporate town deep in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest simply because he absolutely hated buying rubber from the British. He named this masterpiece of corporate hubris Fordlandia, and tried to force indigenous workers to live in identical Midwestern-style houses, eat oatmeal, and attend mandatory square dances. The project was an unmitigated disaster from day one, as you cannot just plant rubber trees tightly together in the jungle without them immediately being devoured by localized caterpillars and aggressive fungus. The workers eventually rioted over the terrible food and strict rules, physically chasing the American managers into the jungle with machetes. Ford eventually abandoned the crumbling town after losing a fortune, serving as a hilarious historical warning that you cannot aggressively enforce Detroit-style micromanagement on the world's most hostile rainforest ecosystem!