This topic is indeed a long one and probably can be written as a complete book if an attempt is made to cover all aspects of oil palm development in detail. In this paper, the author purposely wanted to unveil to the palm oil community a glimpse of the historical past on the development of the industry. Many countries for which oil palm was totally foreign have now emerged as giants of the industry making the countries from where it originated fade into oblivion during the past few decades. In the beginning, oil palm was only considered to be a decorative palm meant for gardens but today it has become a formidable commercial crop growing very fast throughout the world. A glimpse of the latest technologies of recent origin is also in this paper, although it is possible some others could have been left out. Palm oil development in recent times had been quite rapid and probably in a decade or two, faster development is anticipated in the field of biodiesel, oleochemicals and some health products.