1982: In a fitting sign of the times, two brokerage firms — Lombard-Wall Inc., a government bond dealer, and Colin, Hochstin Co., a marketmaker in small stocks — go bankrupt on the same day. The Wall Street Journal quotes Gary Fragin, head of stock trading at Oppenheimer & Co., saying that "it appears that the market will have to go lower before we'll see a sustained rally, because each time it has tried to rally recently there hasn't been any followthrough." The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes the day at 776.92, or 218.23 points below its last record high of Feb. 9, 1966. The very next day, one of the greatest bull markets of all time begins.

Victor J. Hillery, "Another Decline Drops Industrials by 2.09 Points in Moderate Trading," The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 1982, p. 31;The New York Times, August 13, 1982, pp. A1, D1

1981: The PC hits the mainstream as IBM introduces its "Personal Computer," which for a list price of $1,265 comes with a whopping 16 kilobytes of user memory and 40 kilobytes of ROM with Microsoft BASIC. For just $90 more, you can expand the memory by another whole 16 kb.

Phil Koopman, "Finally–IBM Unleashes Personal Micro," Electronic Engineering Times, August 17, 1981, p. 1;Inside Out: Microsoft — In Our Own Words (New York, Warner Books, 2000), pp. 18-19

1932: After losing nearly 90% of its value since the market peak just three years earlier, the Dow Jones Industrial Average adds insult to injury, losing 8.4% of its value in a single day — the six-worst percentage loss on record. The index drops 5.79 points to close the day at a miserable 63.11 — roughly the level the index had been at in 1907.

John A. Prestbo, ed., The Market's Measure: An Illustrated History of America Told through the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow Jones, New York, 1999), p. 79

1930: Clarence Birdseye is awarded a U.S. patent for the invention of packaged frozen food.

1920: Charles Ponzi is arrested for financial fraud in Boston after taking in more than $6 million from thousands of investors. He repaid each $1,000 invested with $1,500 just 90 days later–but only by taking more money from newcomers or, as a judge later puts it, "robbing Peter to pay Paul." Such pyramid arrangements are forever afterwards known as "Ponzi schemes."

Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi: The Man and His Legendary Scheme (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 280