1996: Iomega Corp., the maker of Zip disk drives, becomes the first lovechild of the Internet investing boom. Boosted by individual investors egging each other on in newfangled forums called "chat rooms" and "bulletin boards," the stock hits $27 a share (adjusted for two stock splits in the previous four months). Even though it's followed by almost no Wall Street analysts, the stock is up 2,135% over the previous year. Unfortunately, exactly one year later, Iomega stock will end up at $8.625, a 68.1% loss.

1973: The development of the Internet accelerates as computer scientist Robert Metcalfe, working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), drafts a memo describing what he calls "The ETHER! Network," or Ethernet.

Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (HarperBusiness, New York, 1999), p. 187

1928: Thomas Boone Pickens is born in Holdenville, Okla., the son of a "landman" (an agent who tries to get landowners to sell oil companies the rights to explore for oil on their property). He later heads Mesa Petroleum and, with his unsolicited bid to buy Cities Service Co. in 1982, sets off the hostile takeover wars of the 1980s.

The Handbook of Texas Online,