1996: Chase Manhattan and Chemical Banking — descendants of a water supply company founded in 1799 and a maker of chemicals founded in 1823 — merge, forming what then is the largest bank-holding company in America.

1951: The Eckert-Mauchly division of Remington Rand turns over a UNIVAC computer to the U.S. Census Bureau, the first major commercial sale of a "stored-program" computer.

Paul Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998), p. 27.

1928: Alarmed at the feverish speculation in the bull market, Charles E. Merrill, the head of Merrill Lynch & Co., warns his clients to get out of stocks. "Take advantage of present high prices and put your own financial house in order," he pleads. Few listen, and Merrill looks like a fool. By the end of 1929, however, he looks pretty smart. (Merrill Lynch later decides that bearishness does not pay; broker James Benham is ostracized in the early 1970s for telling clients to sell their stocks.)

Joseph Nocera, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994), pp. 38, 79.

1854: U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry — after belching black smoke from his warships in Tokyo Bay and then unloading a telegraph, a daguerreotype camera, and a chronicle of the Mexican War illustrated with bloody battle scenes — armtwists the Japanese imperial government into signing the Treaty of Kanagawa, opening Japan to U.S. trade for the first time.