1997: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, two months short of its 101st birthday, gets a jolt of juice as the editors of The Wall Street Journal replace "old-economy" stocks Bethlehem Steel, Texaco, Westinghouse Electric and Woolworth with Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Travelers Group and Wal-Mart.

John A. Prestbo, ed., The Market's Measure: An Illustrated History of America Told through the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow Jones, New York, 1999), p. 24.

1971: Pres. Richard M. Nixon signs legislation providing a 10% increase in Social Security benefits (and a hike in the payroll tax rates, from 5% of the first $7,800 in wages to 5.15% of the first $9,000). A retiree who would have received $500 a month at the beginning of 1969 would be receiving $759 per month, or 51.8% more, by the end of 1972.

Sylvester J. Schieber and John B. Shoven, The Real Deal: The History and Future of Social Security (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999), pp. 158-159. 161.

1938: The governing committee of the New York Stock Exchange meets and agrees unanimously to expel former president Richard Whitney, who has embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of securities from trust funds under his oversight.

John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938 (Harper & Row, New York, 1969), p. 273.

1821: On one of the quietest days in Wall Street history, the market is open, but not a single share of stock changes hands. (Only three days earlier, trading volume was also zero.)

Walter Werner and Steven Smith, Wall Street (Columbia University Press, New York, 1991), p. 163.