Johnson (Howard) is born in Boston.

Howard Johnson leaves elementary school to work in his father’s cigar store, then works in a restaurant, and then buys hos own drugstore/soda fountain on Wollaston Beach in Quincy, offering hand-made ice cream to customers. He opens his first sit-down restaurant in the Granite Trust Building in Quincy in 1929, his first franchise restaurant in Orleans, and his first franchise restaurant in Boston in 1935.* The company becomes the first national restaurant chain, known for the many flavors of their ice cream and the blue and orange roofs on their buildings. Johnson dies in New York City on June 20, 1972.