The gift reflects the outsized ambitions the retail-chain family has for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a complex of eight gallery pavilions it has helped build around a pair of ponds in the company's northwestern Arkansas hometown of Bentonville (population 35, 301).

WSJ: Wal-Mart Heirs Give $800 Million to Museum

If there was any doubt left about the impact of globalization of the supply chain, the news this month should make it crystal clear: supply chains today are attenuated and extremely vulnerable to repercussions from events far outside the control of those who manage and rely on them.

FORBES: Supply Chain Lessons From Japan

Once an isotope causes the crystal to flash, a photosensitive cathode releases electrons into a vacuum tube where a chain reaction produces a cascade, as in the Geiger counter.

FORBES: Stopping Porta-Nukes