24 October 2020

On this date in . . .
from: http://www.scopesys.com
    
1836 The match is patented

AND IN MILITARY HISTORY
from: thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com

1929 – Black Thursday—the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression. Dow Jones was down 12.8%. Stock values collapsed and 13 million shares changed hands as small investors frantically tried to sell off their holdings, a new record; 4 million was the average of the day. Thousands of confused investors and brokers were ruined and banks, which had also invested heavily in the market, failed when they could not produce enough cash on demand for angry depositors. Most of the panic took place in the morning hours. The ticker tape machine fell behind by an hour and a half leaving investors madly scrambling to sell their investments without even knowing the current prices. Panic set in. People gathered outside the exchanges and brokerages, police were dispatched to insure peace. Rumors were flying. By 12:30 pm, the Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges closed down, eleven well-known speculators had already killed themselves and the NYSE closed the visitor’s gallery on the wild scenes below. Reporters learned that an important meeting was taking place at the office of J.P. Morgan and Company, involving many of the most important men in banking. After the meeting broke, Thomas Lamont, senior partner at Morgan – a company founded by a man who had help stop a panic in 1907, made the following statement to newspaper reporters: “There has been a little distress selling on the Stock Exchange… due to a technical condition of the market” and that things were “susceptible to betterment.” The market moved up a bit after Lamont’s statement, but the real recovery came at 1:30 pm, when self-confident Richard Whitney, vice-president of the NYSE and floor broker of J.P. Morgan and Company, walked into the exchange floor. The crowd went silent. Everyone expected an announcement that the NYSE would be closed. Instead, Richard Whitney surprised everybody… Whitney asked for the latest bid on U.S. Steel. “195” someone shouted. Then he promptly announced that he was buying 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel at 205. He immediately received 200 shares and then left the rest of the order with the specialist. He continued to make similar orders for over a dozen more stocks. Fear evaporated as investors became worried that they would miss the new boom. The market would have closed much higher if stop loss orders from earlier that day hadn’t been triggered during the upward surge. Needless to say, the recovery on Black Thursday was impressive, but so was the massive sell off earlier in the morning that gave it its name. Friday and Saturday morning sessions held steady as everyone became optimistic with the market’s ability to recover. These feelings were squashed on Black Monday.

1.  To enhance the morale of active-duty personnel and their families,
2.  To inform Congress and the American public on the importance of strong sea services, and
3.  To support youth through programs that expose young people to the values of our sea services.