1985: Philip Morris Cos. agrees to buy General Foods Corp. for $120 per share, or $5.75 billion, the largest takeover yet on record outside the oil industry. Many Philip Morris shareholders are angry that the tobacco company is diversifying into a slow-growing business like processed food.

The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 1985, pp. 1, 3

1974: The field of behavioral finance is born as Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publishes "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases." This underwhelmingly titled but overwhelmingly brilliant article, by Hebrew University psychology professors Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, is the first major research paper to demonstrate that humans do not always make risky decisions rationally — a contention that, incredibly, is still disputed by mainstream economists.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," Science, vol. 185 (September 27, 1974), pp. 1124-1131.

1820: A train carries passengers for the first time as George Stephenson, a self-taught engineer in the coal mines of Newcastle, England, demonstrates his new steam-propelled locomotive on rails, "The Rocket." The train hauls a huge cargo load from Brusselton to Stockton — a total of just under 21 miles — in four hours and 12 minutes, a blistering pace of 5 mph. The crowd of onlookers — and the 600 "passengers" who have clambered aboard the train — are astounded.