1990: Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. Over the next two-and-a-half months, the U.S. stock market loses 19% and many experts begin to forecast a protracted bear market. Yet, just one year later, the U.S. stock market is up 26.9%.

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. 95;Ibbotson Associates

1926: The Dow Jones financial news ticker carries the text of an interview with Thomas Cochran, a senior partner at J.P. Morgan & Co. "General Motors running at its current rate is cheap at the price," says Cochran, "and it should and will sell at least one hundred points higher." It is an astonishing statement: J.P. Morgan is General Motors' investment banker, the firm has huge holdings of GM stock, and several of its partners sit on GM's board of directors. GM's stock goes wild, soaring from $189.50 to $201 in minutes. It is a watershed moment: Wall Street has dropped its high-minded reluctance to tout individual stocks; from now on, bankers and brokers will "talk their book" without the slightest qualm.

John Brooks, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920-1938 (Harper & Row, New York, 1969), pp. 87-88.

1902: R.H. Marriott and reporters from The Los Angeles Herald exchange the first authenticated radio signals between Marriott's "wireless telegraphy" station on Catalina Island and a station near San Pedro, on the mainland about 25 miles from Catalina.