1957: The Ford Motor Co. officially introduces its new midsized car. The company projects that it will sell 200,000 of the model, which chairman Henry Ford II names the "Edsel," after his father. But the base price of $3,500, coupled with a dizzying array of options–and the onset of a recession– makes the launch of the car a fiasco. Although Ford has spent roughly $250 million developing the car, only 110,000 sell over the course of two-and-a-half years. The Edsel goes down in history as a disaster, and its name becomes an enduring synonym for failure.

1882: Thomas Alva Edison opens the Pearl Street Station, the first central generating system, making electric lighting and power possible in New York City–and the world. At 3 p.m., he flips a switch at 23 Wall Street, turning on 106 electric lamps in the offices of his financial backer, J.P. Morgan's investment bank Drexel, Morgan & Co.

Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (Random House, New York, 1999), p. 233