1933: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Securities Act of 1933, requiring all issuers of stocks and bonds to publish a prospectus disclosing risks, conflicts of interest, and ownership positions. Says Roosevelt: "The Act is thus intended to correct some of the evils which have been so glaringly revealed in the private exploitation of the public's money." With the public crying for revenge on Wall Street after the Crash of 1929, the bill had passed in the House of Representatives without any debate or a recorded vote; the Senate had debated it for only two hours.

Joel Seligman, The Transformation of Wall Street: A History of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Modern Wall Street (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1982), p. 38;Barrie A. Wigmore, The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, and London, 1985), p. 425

1794: Cornelius Vanderbilt is born on a farm in Staten Island, N.Y. He starts off in the steamboat business with $100, breaking Robert Fulton's monopoly on steamboat traffic in the Hudson River by charging 75% less. He then moves into railroads, building the New York Central into one of the world's dominant businesses, and dies as the world's richest man in 1877, with a $105 million fortune.