1987: The Wall Street Journal reports where eight investing experts think the stock market is headed. Greta Marshall, chief investment officer of the California Public Employees Retirement System, forecasts that "overvalued markets can become substantially more overvalued." Technical guru Joe Granville, who "called" the bear market of 1981-1982, foresees "the bull market running at least another year." Just two months from now, the bull market collapses in the worst crash since 1929.

Cynthia Crossen, "How Eight Veterans Approached the Bull Market," The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 1987, p. C1.

1971: "Socially responsible" investing comes out of the counterculture and goes mainstream. Pax World Fund, the first broadly diversified mutual fund to invest in companies based on social and environmental criteria, is launched in Washington, DC, by Luther Tyson and Jack Corbett. Liberal Democrats can finally act like capitalists without having to blush.

1945: As Allied air raids reach a crescendo, Japan's stock exchanges close down; trading will remain suspended until 1949.

1897: Looking for a remedy for his father's rheumatism, a young German chemist named Felix Hoffman synthesizes a stable form of acetylsalicylic acid in a laboratory in Berlin. The head of Bayer's pharmacological institute, Heinrich Dreser, lambastes Hoffmann's discovery as "typical Berlin hot air; the product is worthless." Bayer soon names the product "aspirin," and it becomes the best-selling drug of all time.

David Pilling, "Pill of the Century, The Financial Times, February 13/February 14, 1999, p. W7