2000: The New York Stock Exchange begins trading in decimals, ending the two-century-old practice of pricing stocks in increments of 1/8th of a dollar. In theory, investors will benefit from lower trading costs, but cynics worry that brokers will make more money than ever. The first to adopt decimal pricing: Anadarko Petroleum, FedEx, Forest City Enterprises, Gateway, Hughes Supply, and MSC Software.

The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2000, p. C1

1937: Risaburo Toyoda and Kiichiro Toyoda establish Toyota Motor Co., Ltd., with initial capital of 12 million yen, to design and produce automobiles. (Only recently has the Japanese government made it legal to manufacture cars in Japan.) The Toyodas, who run a family-owned producer of spinning and weaving equipment, have spent nearly a decade of their "spare time" patiently making prototypes of small, cheap cars that just might appeal to Japan's working class. It turns out that they do.

Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota: A History of the First 50 Years (Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota City, Japan, 1988), pp. 36-37, 66-67.

1922: The broadcast commercial is born as the Queensboro Corp. pays $50 for a 10-minute block of airtime on AT&T's New York radio station, WEAF. Queensboro uses the time to praise the virtues of suburban living and to promote its new apartment complex in Jackson Heights (in the New York borough of Queens). Snappy copy is not yet an advertising virtue: "I wish to thank those within sound of my voice," intones the announcer, "for the broadcasting opportunity afforded me to urge this vast radio audience to seek the recreation and the daily comfort of the home removed from the congested part of the city?." Still, Queensboro's revenues jump by $127,000 over the next three weeks thanks to this "speech," and a new industry is born.

Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate (Oxford University Press, New York, 1978), pp. 15, 186n.

1859: A drifter named Edwin Drake strikes oil in Titusville, PA, setting off the "black gold rush." Dozens of publicly traded companies spring up; over the next decade, most of them will become worthless.

Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Random House, 1998), p. 9;James K. Medbery, Men and Mysteries of Wall Street (Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1870;reprinted, Fraser Publishing Co., Wells, VT, 1968), p. 282.