1996: Lenin rolls over in his grave. Vimpel Communications becomes the first Russian company to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

1994: The Federal Reserve raises interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, one of its biggest hikes ever, and the sixth increase so far in 1994. Already bearish bond analysts turn downright dismal, forecasting that interest rates will soon go above 8%. Instead, rates fall in 1995 and long-term Treasury bonds have their best year since 1982, returning 31.7%.

Stock, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation 1996 Yearbook (Ibbotson Associates, Chicago, 1996), p. 39;Michael R. Pakko and David C. Wheelock, ÒMonetary Policy and Financial Market Expectations: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?Ó Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, July/August, 1996

1971: The money-market mutual fund is born as the prospectus for the Reserve Fund, created by Bruce Bent and Henry Brown, becomes effective. Now mutual funds can compete directly with banks, offering daily income dividends, daily redemptions and a constant net asset value per share.

Bruce Bent, interview with Jason Zweig, January 28, 2000.

1971: The microprocessor is officially born as Intel introduces its new 4004 chip, invented by Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin. An eighth of an inch long by 1/16th of an inch wide, it holds over 2,000 transistors and has almost as much computational power as the 30-ton ENIAC computer of 1946. But the holder of the commercial rights, Busicom of Japan, sees no use for the chip and sells its entire interest to Intel for $60,000.

Tim Jackson, Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company (PenguinPutnam, New York, 1998), p. 73.

1923: With hyperinflation raging in Germany, the value of the German mark implodes, as it takes 4.2 trillion marks to buy one dollar's worth of goods; just over three years earlier, it had taken only 40 marks to equal a dollar. Workers are paid twice a day and rush out at lunch hour, shoving wheelbarrows of money through the streets in panic, desperate to buy anything they can find before shopkeepers raise prices again.

David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996), p. 193.

1907: After months of grinding declines, the Panic of 1907 hits rock bottom as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 53.00, down 43.8% for the year to date.

1904: King Camp Gillette, a Utopian socialist whose proposal to build a city of 60 million people near Niagara Falls fell flat, patents the safety blade and razor.

1867: The first practical stock ticker goes "online," as Thomas Edison's improved gizmo makes continuous nationwide transmission of stock prices possible for the first time.

Museum of American Financial History;Alexander J. Field, "The Telegraphic Transmission of Financial Asset Prices and Orders to Trade: Implications for Economic Growth, Trading Volume, and Securities Market Regulation," Research in Economic History, vol. 18 (1998), pp. 145-184, p. 166