2000: Intel Corp. announces that it expects third-quarter revenues to rise 3% to 5%, below earlier forecasts of 7% to 9%. That's just $330 million below expectations-but, in after-market trading, Intel drops from $61.48 to $48.25, a $91 billion loss in market value. The next day, 309 million Intel shares change hands, breaking NASDAQ's single-stock volume record by more than 100 million shares. Over the next two trading days, the stock slides to $43.31, erasing a total of $122 billion in market value.

Bradford Cornell, "Valuing Intel: A Strange Tale of Analysts and Announcements," UCLA Finance Working Paper, November, 2000, at:

1999: Priceline.com announces the expansion of its "name your own price" idea to a new affiliate, the WebHouse Club. Allowing shoppers to dicker online for groceries gives Priceline entrée into what it claims is a $660 billion market. Priceline founder Jay S. Walker crows: "The WebHouse Club demonstrates vividly that priceline.com's name-your-price model is scalable across almost any product category." The next day, Priceline stock surges 10%, but it turns out that "almost" is the key word: Just over one year later, Priceline shuts the WebHouse Club down after massive losses.

Priceline.com press release, September 21, 1999:;Priceline.com press release, October 5, 2000:

1938: As forecasters predict a few clouds or scattered showers, the Hurricane of 1938 crashes across Long Island and coastal Connecticut with 186-mph winds, killing some 600 people, flattening 275 million trees, and doing $306 million in damage. The stock market is blown over, too; while the Dow closes up one point for the day, at 139.29, the market loses 7% of its value over the next four trading days.

Weatherwise Magazine, November/December, 1999, p. 19

1931: The day after the Bank of England abandons the gold standard, U.S. stocks tumble. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 6.2% to an intraday low of 104.79, and the New York Stock Exchange authorities debate closing the market. But NYSE President Richard Whitney insists that the market should remain open, and the executives compromise by instituting a temporary ban on short-selling. By day's end, stocks have recovered almost all their lost ground, with the Dow closing at 110.83, down less than 1%.

John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938 (Harper & Row, New York, 1969), p. 132;Peter L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2000), p. 315;Barrie A. Wigmore, The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Greenwood Press, Westport, Ct., 1985), p. 301;Phyllis S. Pierce, ed., The Dow Jones Averages 1885-1980 (DowJones Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1982), not paginated.

1893: Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea proudly show off the first gasoline-powered automobile built in the U.S., taking their new Duryea out for a public spin through the streets of Springfield, Mass.

1784: The first daily newspaper in the United States, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, begins publishing.