1996: Bre-X Minerals Ltd., an obscure Calgary-based company claiming to have discovered more than 30 million oz. of gold in Indonesia, is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock rises to $192.50 within minutes. Over the next year it will turn out that the gold does not exist; one of Bre-X's executives commits suicide by jumping out of a helicopter, and the company goes bankrupt on November 5, 1997, after torching at least $3 billion in investors' dreams.

Richard Behar, "Jungle Fever: The Bre-X Saga," Fortune, June 9, 1997, pp. 116-130

1985: Amid huge fanfare, Coca-Cola boss Roberto Goizueta introduces New Coke at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Manhattan's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. "The best," he declares, "has been made even better." When it becomes clear that the company is replacing its original formula, rather than offering New Coke alongside it, the company's Atlanta headquarters is deluged with thousands of angry telephone calls from consumers. As one customer complains, "Changing Coke is like God making the grass purple or putting toes on our ears or teeth on our knees."

Frederick Allen, Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World (HarperBusiness, New York, 1994), pp. 410-414.

1856: Granville T. Woods is born in Columbus, Ohio. With only a fourth-grade education, he becomes one of the greatest African-American inventors. Among his dozens of patents: the multiplex telegraph (which makes train travel vastly safer by enabling moving trains to signal their location to stations and other trains) and improved overhead power lines for trains (which make trolleys possible, revolutionizing urban life).