2001: The U.S. Department of Justice announces that it will no longer seek to break up Microsoft Corp., instead asking a Federal judge to impose limitations on the company's business practices. Among the likely measures: making Microsoft build more flexibility into its software so that PC makers can change how it is installed, limiting Microsoft's ability to "bundle" other software into its Windows program, and banning Microsoft from punishing computer makers that use software from other companies.

The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2001, p. A3;The New York Times, September 7, 2001, p. A1;Financial Times, September 7, 2001, p. 1

1993: A consultant named Peter de Jager publishes "Doomsday 2000," the first major article to warn about what becomes known as the "Y2K" problem. In the years to come, the world spends hundreds of billions of dollars to reprogram computers so that they can accept dates beyond "1999." And on January 1, 2000, when worldwide meltdown is widely forecast by doomsayers like de Jager, absolutely nothing happens.

1968: A small technical company called Bolt, Beranek & Newman submits a proposal for a contract to design "Interface Message Processors for the ARPA Computer Network," so that computers at four different research outposts funded by the Department of Defense can communicate with each other. It becomes known later as ARPAnet, the ancestor of the Internet–even though key designer Severo Ornstein exclaims, "I have no idea why anybody would want such a thing."

Stephen Segaller, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet (TV Books, New York, 1998), pp. 67-77.

1966: The New York Stock Exchange Composite Index, a basket of blue-chip stocks, is launched.

1916: At 79 Jefferson St. in Memphis, Tenn., Clarence Saunders opens what is believed to be the nation's first self-service supermarket. Instead of the prevailing notion of making customers submit their orders to clerks who would fetch the items from the store's shelves, Saunders allows his customers to serve themselves. Experts ridicule the idea, but customers appear to like it. Today, Saunders' Piggly Wiggly Corp. is one of the biggest grocery store chains in the country.

1862: Congress establishes the first U.S. pension allowance, paying up to $8 a month to injured or disabled Union soldiers or their heirs.

Dora L. Costa, The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990 (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998), p. 198.

1784: The earliest known advertisement by an American broker, as Joshua Eaton of Boston announces in the Massachusetts Centinel: "Public Securities of every denomination Negotiated: Business on Commission, transacted with attention and punctuality, and every favor gratefully acknowledged."

Walter Werner and Steven Smith, Wall Street (Columbia University Press, New York, 1991), p. 49.