1997: The New York Stock Exchange begins quoting share prices in 1/16ths, nicknamed "steenths" or "teenies." In theory, this narrows the spread between the bid price and the ask price, increasing the net return for investors. But on Wall Street, the Law of Unintended Consequences governs almost everything, and what you see is seldom what you get. In practice, the move to "teenies" makes filling large orders at a good price much harder, raising the cost of many trades, especially for institutions.

Charles M. Jones and Marc L. Lipson, "Sixteenths: Direct Evidence on Institutional Execution Costs," Journal of Financial Economics, February, 2001 (vol. 59, no. 2), p. 254

1971: An entrepreneur named Fred Smith founds a company to compete with the U.S. Postal Service. His goal is to deliver packages overnight — by routing everything, no matter where it originates, through Memphis. The idea is so daffy that one of Smith's business school professors almost flunked him for proposing it. Smith calls his new outfit Federal Express — and, before long, a new verb ("to FedEx") has entered the language.

1971: Daniels & Bell Inc., a brokerage run by Willie Daniels and Travers J. Bell Jr., becomes the first African-American-owned member of the New York Stock Exchange. With the idea of a black-run brokerage still a complete novelty, it has taken the two men roughly two years to raise $1.1 million in capital. After long prosperity and a brief decline, the firm ends up closing its doors in late 1994.

Gregory S. Bell, In the Black: A History of African-Americans on Wall Street (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2002), pp. 59-61, 66-67, 211;"Today in NYSE History," at www.nyse.com/about/TodayInNYSE.html

1964: Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson inaugurates the Picturephone, speaking from the National Geographic Building in Washington and appearing on a 4 3/8"-by-5 3/4" screen in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The new "see-as-you-talk" telephone service connects New York, Washington, and Chicago; a call costs $16 for the first three minutes between New York and Washington, $21 between Chicago and Washington, and $27 between Chicago and New York. AT&T ends up spending roughly $500 million to develop and market the Picturephone, and a Bell Labs official predicts that "before the turn of the century, Picturephone will displace today's means of communication." Fortunately, he didn't specify which century he meant.

The New York Times, June 25, 1964, p. 24