1966: The New York Stock Exchange Composite Index, a basket of blue-chip stocks that reflects the return of America's biggest stocks, is launched.

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.