Black Thursday received its name because it was on that day that the Stock Market began to crash. Investment in the Stock Market was quite small in 1929 compared with the present time but the conditions surrounding the market at that time were the reasons for its collapse. Thursday, October 24, 1929, is remembered as …
Even the largest of corporations can go bankrupt, and the Third World has many countries that constantly teeter on the verge of insolvency. But the financial cataclysm that brought the proud little nation of Iceland to its knees in 2008 shocked the world. This volcanic island in the North Atlantic with a population of just …
Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850 by three brothers who emigrated to the USA from Germany, initially running a store in Alabama. But they soon turned to cotton trading and shifted operations to New York. Lehman remained a commodities house until the early 20th century, when the focus switched to public offerings, laying foundations for …
The causes of catastrophic financial events that started unfolding in 2007 were many and varied, but one inescapable fact is that consumers in America and Europe (especially the UK) had been living in a fools’ paradise. For years inflation had been low – mainly as a result of cheap imports from the Far East – …
Southern Rhodesia was created by acquisitive British colonial entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes, after whom landlocked territory south of the Zambesi River was named. The country became a self-governing British colony in 1923, but when majority governments started replacing colonial administrations all over Africa, Rhodesia’s white rulers made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, joining …
Every so often, something happens to change the world, from invention of the wheel through the first smelting of iron to gunpowder and the development of the steam engine. But none of the many discoveries that transformed the way people lived could hold a candle to the biggest innovation of them all – the internet, …