1997: As U.S. investors panic over the "Asian contagion" financial crisis, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 554.26 points, or 7.2%, its worst point loss yet (but only the 12th-worst in percentage terms). The New York Stock Exchange closes a half-hour early as its circuit breaker" rules kick in for the first time ever. Only 182 stocks are up while 2937 fall. The front page of The New York Post screams: DON'T PANIC! Good idea: by yearend the Dow is 10.4% higher. In other news Oxford Health Plans Inc. one of the great growth stocks of the 1990s announces that a glitch in its billing software has overstated third-quarter revenues by $111 million. The stock drops from $68.75 to $25.875 erasing $3.4 billion of the company's value in a single day."

The New York Post, October 28, 1987, p. 1;The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1987, p. C1;Yale Hirsch, 2000 Stock Trader's Almanac (Hirsch Organization, Old Tappan, NJ, 1999), pp. 149, 154;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. 111;Peter Keating, Falling Down, Money Magazine, March 1998, p. 87.

1978: The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 is signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter. Also known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act after its co-sponsors, the law requires the Federal Reserve Board to take unemployment and inflation into account as it sets interest rates. It also requires the Fed chairman to testify before Congress twice a year, subjecting the public to some of the most stupefyingly boring speeches of all time.

1923: The greatest bull market of the 20th century begins after the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes the day at 85.76. It lasts nearly 6 years and lifts stocks by 344.5% until the Dow hits 381.17. (Then, beginning in 1929, the Great Crash pulls stocks down by 89%, erasing nearly all these gains.)

Ned Davis Research;Phyllis S. Pierce, ed., The Dow Jones Averages 1885-1980 (DowJones Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1982), not paginated