1983: Pres. Ronald Reagan signs into law the Social Security Amendments of 1983, delaying cost-of-living adjustments and making 50% of Social Security benefits taxable. "This bill," declares Reagan, "demonstrates for all time our nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security." The Social Security Administration forecasts that the system can now remain solvent until the year 2063. By 1994, that date shrinks to the year 2029; by 2004, almost no one thinks Social Security can survive in its present form.

Sylvester J. Schieber and John B. Shoven, The Real Deal: The History and Future of Social Security (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999), pp. 194-197.

1812: Mobs of manual laborers smash and burn a textile mill near Nottingham, England, enraged by its use of mechanized looms, which they fear will put them out of work. Inspired by Ned Ludd, an earlier (and perhaps fictitious) enemy of technology, they become known as Luddites, which still endures as a synonym for people who oppose technological progress. Over the decades to come, England creates more jobs than any other nation ever yet had — even as its factories become more mechanized.

1720: Declaring that he "can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people," Sir Isaac Newton sells his 7,000 pounds' worth of South Sea Co. stock at a 100% profit. Newton is no financial novice — he had, after all, been master of the Royal Mint — but the excitement around England's first great IPO proves too much even for him, and he soon gets back in. Newton ends up losing 20,000 pounds when the bubble bursts in the fall, and from that moment on, he can "never bear to hear the South Sea referred to for the rest of his life."

John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (The Cresset Press, London, 1960), pp. 131 and 199.