On this day:

1692 First people are accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts - Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba, a West Indian slave

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail.[1]

Happy Leap (hop) Day!

In 1960, the first Playboy Club, featuring waitresses clad in "bunny" outfits, opened in Chicago.

"Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, the author and illustrator of such beloved children’s books as “The Cat in the Hat” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” is born in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904. Geisel, who used his middle name (which was also his mother’s maiden name) as his pen name, wrote 48 books–including some for adults–that have sold well over 200 million copies and been translated into multiple languages. Dr. Seuss books are known for their whimsical rhymes and quirky characters, which have names like the Lorax and the Sneetches and live in places like Whoville.

Geisel graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the school’s humor magazine, and studied at Oxford University. There he met Helen Palmer, his first wife and the person who encouraged him to become a professional illustrator. Back in America, Geisel worked as a cartoonist for a variety of magazines and in advertising.

The first children’s book that Geisel wrote and illustrated, “And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street,” was rejected by over two dozen publishers before making it into print in 1937. Geisel’s first bestseller, “The Cat in the Hat,” was published in 1957. The story of a mischievous cat in a tall striped hat came about after his publisher asked him to produce a book using 220 new-reader vocabulary words that could serve as an entertaining alternative to the school reading primers children found boring.

Other Dr. Seuss classics include “Yertle the Turtle,” “If I Ran the Circus,” “Fox in Socks” and “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.”

Some Dr. Seuss books tackled serious themes. “The Butter Battle Book” (1984) was about the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “Lorax” (1971) dealt with the environment.

Many Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television and film, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and “Horton Hears a Who!” In 1990, Geisel published a book for adults titled “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” that became a hugely popular graduation gift for high school and college students.

Geisel, who lived and worked in an old observatory in La Jolla, California, known as “The Tower,” died September 24, 1991, at age 87."

BarnBuster said:

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"Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, the author and illustrator of such beloved children’s books as “The Cat in the Hat” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” is born in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904. Geisel, who used his middle name (which was also his mother’s maiden name) as his pen name, wrote 48 books–including some for adults–that have sold well over 200 million copies and been translated into multiple languages. Dr. Seuss books are known for their whimsical rhymes and quirky characters, which have names like the Lorax and the Sneetches and live in places like Whoville.

Geisel graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the school’s humor magazine, and studied at Oxford University. There he met Helen Palmer, his first wife and the person who encouraged him to become a professional illustrator. Back in America, Geisel worked as a cartoonist for a variety of magazines and in advertising.

The first children’s book that Geisel wrote and illustrated, “And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street,” was rejected by over two dozen publishers before making it into print in 1937. Geisel’s first bestseller, “The Cat in the Hat,” was published in 1957. The story of a mischievous cat in a tall striped hat came about after his publisher asked him to produce a book using 220 new-reader vocabulary words that could serve as an entertaining alternative to the school reading primers children found boring.

Other Dr. Seuss classics include “Yertle the Turtle,” “If I Ran the Circus,” “Fox in Socks” and “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.”

Some Dr. Seuss books tackled serious themes. “The Butter Battle Book” (1984) was about the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “Lorax” (1971) dealt with the environment.

Many Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television and film, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and “Horton Hears a Who!” In 1990, Geisel published a book for adults titled “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” that became a hugely popular graduation gift for high school and college students.

Geisel, who lived and worked in an old observatory in La Jolla, California, known as “The Tower,” died September 24, 1991, at age 87."

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I heard that it was his birthday this morning on NPR. I think of him every time I see Florida Trail thru hikers starting out. Down near the southern terminus there is some vegetation crazy enough to be in his books.

"On March 3, 1931, America officially adopted “The Star Spangled Banner” as its national anthem.

The inspiration for the “Star Spangled Banner” came over a century earlier, during the War of 1812. In September 1814, Georgetown lawyer Francis Scott Key was dispatched to a British ship to rescue a beloved local doctor.

Key happened to make this journey shortly before the start of the Battle of Fort McHenry. Although he managed to negotiate the doctor’s release, he’d heard the British plans to attack Fort McHenry and was forced to remain on the ship for the 25-hour battle. The next morning he looked to the fort and saw that “the flag was still there.” The British attack had failed. So moved by the sight, he penned the poem “Defence of Fort McHenry.”

Although the Battle of Fort McHenry was a major influence, Key also used some wording and imagery from a poem he’d written earlier about Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart for their bravery during the First Barbary War. A few days after the battle, Key took his poem to his brother-in-law, who found that the words would perfectly with the melody John Stafford Smith’s “The Anacreontic Song.” The first broadsides were printed on September 17 and the song first appeared in the Baltimore Patriot and The American newspapers three days later.

Key’s song quickly resonated with Americans and it was published in several more newspapers. Then music store owner Thomas Carr published the words and music together under a new title, “The Star Spangled Banner.” A Baltimore actor named Ferdinand Durang first performed the song publicly in October 1814.

In the coming years, “The Star Spangled Banner” became a popular staple at Fourth of July celebrations and other patriotic events. In 1892, Colonel Caleb Carlton, post commander at Fort Meade, South Dakota, began the practice of playing the song “at retreat and at the close of parades and concerts.” Carlton shared the idea with his state governor and later the Secretary of War, to encourage the practice be instituted nationally among America’s military. As a result of these efforts “The Star Spangled Banner” was made the official tune for the Navy’s flag raisings in July 1889.

By the early 1900s, there were several different versions of “The Star Spangled Banner,” so president Woodrow Wilson asked the Bureau of Education to standardize it and make an official version. The Bureau hired five musicians, including John Philip Sousa, to complete the task. The standardized song was first performed on December 5, 1917.

The following April, Maryland congressman John Charles Linthicum submitted a bill calling for the “The Star Spangled Banner” to be officially adopted as the national anthem. The bill failed to pass. But Linthicum didn’t give up and continued to submit his proposal five more times. Then in 1929, Robert Ripley produced a cartoon for his Ripley’s Believe it or Not! that said, “Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem.”

Progress continued in 1930, when the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) launched their own campaign to establish “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. Their petition, signed by five million people, helped convince the House Committee on the Judiciary to support the bill. In the coming months the House of Representatives and Senate passed the bill, which was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on March 3, 1931"

The German company Bayer patents aspirin on March 6, 1899. Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine, beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19th century, it was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to damage the stomach.

In 1897, Bayer employee Felix Hoffmann found a way to create a stable form of the drug that was easier and more pleasant to take. (Some evidence shows that Hoffmann’s work was really done by a Jewish chemist, Arthur Eichengrun, whose contributions were covered up during the Nazi era.) After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time. The brand name came from “a” for acetyl, “spir” from the spirea plant (a source of salicin) and the suffix “in,” commonly used for medications. It quickly became the number-one drug worldwide.

Aspirin was made available in tablet form and without a prescription in 1915. Two years later, when Bayer’s patent expired during the First World War, the company lost the trademark rights to aspirin in various countries. After the United States entered the war against Germany in April 1917, the Alien Property Custodian, a government agency that administers foreign property, seized Bayer’s U.S. assets. Two years later, the Bayer company name and trademarks for the United States and Canada were auctioned off and purchased by Sterling Products Company, later Sterling Winthrop, for $5.3 million.

Bayer became part of IG Farben, the conglomerate of German chemical industries that formed the financial heart of the Nazi regime. After World War II, the Allies split apart IG Farben, and Bayer again emerged as an individual company. Its purchase of Miles Laboratories in 1978 gave it a product line including Alka-Seltzer and Flintstones and One-A-Day Vitamins. In 1994, Bayer bought Sterling Winthrop’s over-the-counter business, gaining back rights to the Bayer name and logo and allowing the company once again to profit from American sales of its most famous product.

1899: Bayer patents aspirin, will pretend it hadn’t been invented by a Jew

Sent to Theresienstadt in 1943, Arthur Eichengruen finally protested the theft of credit for the invention, in an attempt to get released. It didn’t work – but he survived.

www.haaretz.com

On this day, as with every other day since time began, lies were told to public at large in order to propagate an unknown agenda.
On this day, as with every other day since time began, people began waking up to the truth rather than watching the shadows on the wall.
On this day, as with every other day since time began, the majority of people chose to continue to have the wool pulled over their eyes.
On this day, as with every other day since time began, the emperor wears no clothes.

Edgar Allan Poe kicked out of West Point
He was court-martialed and formally dismissed from the academy on March 6, 1831.


Edgar Allan Poe, photographed in 1848.
COURTESY OF THE EDGAR ALLAN POE MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA

It’s not hard to believe that Edgar Allan Poe, author of “The Pit and the Pendulum” and other horror stories, went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, an institution conspicuously absent from the list of top party schools.

Poe tried hard to get kicked out of West Point, and in 1831, he succeeded. Rumor is that the final straw came when he reported for drill wearing belts for his cartridges, a smile and nothing else, but did he actually do it? It’s time for a visit to The Rumor Doctor.

Poe’s tenure at West Point from July 1830 to February 1831 was “short, yet tumultuous,” according to, “Edgar Allan Poe: The Army Years,” a publication from West Point’s library.

“His emotional instability coupled with deep personal problems, such as his constant need for funds and a lack of time to devote to poetry more than his deficiency in military aptitude, cut short his cadetship,” the library publication said.

But there are no records of Poe showing up for drill naked. Instead, Poe was court-martialed after he stopped going to class, parade, roll calls and chapel in January 1831. The following month, he was dismissed.

The earliest references to Poe pulling “The Fully Monty” while on parade date back to the 1920s, said Christopher Semtner, curator of The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Va.


In reality, Poe’s meltdown was triggered in part by his strained relationship with his foster father, John Allan, who had recently remarried, cutting Poe out of any family inheritance, Semtner said in an e-mail. Things came to a head when one of Poe’s outstanding debts came to haunt him.

Poe had enlisted in the Army in 1827, rising to the rank of sergeant major. In order to attend West Point, he hired a soldier named Samuel Graves to finish his term. But Poe never paid Graves, claiming in a letter that Allan “was probably drunk and had forgotten to send the money,” Semtner said.

Graves sent Poe’s note to Allan, who then sent Poe a letter saying their relationship was over. Poe responded by saying he intended to resign from West Point.

But that didn’t deter Poe from trying to pursue a military career. A month after leaving West Point, he asked the school’s superintendent for a letter of recommendation so he could join the Polish army. There’s no evidence he got a reply.

Historical Vignette 135 - Edgar Allan Poe and West Point
After accumulating massive gambling debts at the University of Virginia and leaving without a degree, Edgar Allan Poe moved to Boston where, at age 18, he published his first book of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. It was a slim affair, drew little attention, and made no money at all for its nearly destitute author. Orphaned at an early age, Poe had deeply alienated his wealthy guardian, John Allan, and needed to earn a living. On a whim he enlisted (using an alias, “Edgar A. Perry”) in the Army as a private for a five-year term in the First Regiment of Artillery. Through the fall of 1827 he remained in Boston at Fort Independence but in November relocated to Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. There he prepared shells for artillery and seemed to flourish. Thirteen months later he transferred again, this time to Fortress Monroe at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. After just two years of military service, Poe attained the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery, the highest enlisted rank open to him. Then, abruptly, he found a substitute and quit the Army to pursue an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Allan intervened on Poe’s behalf one last time and used his considerable influence to secure the appointment.

The 21-year-old poet entered the academy in March 1830. Well-schooled and quick-witted, he excelled at classwork, particularly French. But—despite his experience in the Army—he buckled under the harsh discipline, long marches, and miserable food. “The study requisite is incessant,” he grumbled to Allan, “and the discipline exceedingly rigid.” His keen wit sustained him for a time and, according to his classmate, Thomas Gibson, “poems and squibs of local interest were daily issued [by Poe]… and went the round of the Classes.” One surviving stanza ridiculed the instructor of tactics and inspector of the barracks, Joe Locke, who was tasked also with reporting all cadet violations:

John Locke was a very great name:
Joe Locke was a greater in short;
The former was well known to Fame,
The latter well known to Report.

In January Poe quit his classes with predicable results. He was court-martialed and formally dismissed from the academy on March 6, 1831. As a parting shot, he secured a cadet subscription of $170 to underwrite the publication of his third book of poetry. It was mostly a rehash of his earlier work and was received, as one former roommate remembered, “with a general expression of disgust.” Another wrote in his copy, “This book is a damn cheat,” and that presumably because it contained not one of the humorous squibs and satires that had fed his reputation for genius at the academy. A fair number of cadets flung their copies into the Hudson River.

Poe went on, of course, to become one of America’s most celebrated authors, known particularly for his treatment of mystery, science fiction—and perhaps most famously—the macabre.


View of West Point from Phillipstown
by W.J. Bennett, 1831

On March 7, 1965, state and local police used billy clubs, whips, and tear gas to attack hundreds of civil rights protesters beginning a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery. Marchers were protesting the denial of voting rights to African Americans as well as the murder of 26-year-old activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had been fatally shot in the stomach by police during a peaceful protest just days before.

The march was led by John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Reverend Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and found themselves facing a line of state and county officers poised to attack. When demonstrators did not promptly obey the officers' order to disband and turn back, troopers brutally attacked them on horseback, wielding weapons and chasing down fleeing men, women, and children. Dozens of civil rights activists were later hospitalized with severe injuries.

Horrifying images of the violence were broadcast on national television, shocking many viewers and helping to rouse support for the civil rights cause. Activists organized another march two days later, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged supporters from throughout the country to come to Selma to join. Many heeded his call, and the events helped spur passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 three months later.

1936 Adolf Hitler breaks the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops into the Rhineland

The remilitarisation of the Rhineland (German: Rheinlandbesetzung) by the German Army began on 7 March 1936 when German military forces entered the Rhineland. This was significant because it violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region. The remilitarisation changed the balance of power in Europe from France and its allies towards Germany, making it possible for Germany to pursue a policy of aggression in Western Europe that the demilitarised status of the Rhineland had blocked until then. Hitler had officially violated the treaty of Versailles.

Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire
On this day in 321

1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone in the US

As everyone knows, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Or did he? He was certainly granted a patent on this day for the device. But over a 20-year period the Bell Telephone Company which he founded faced more than 600 court challenges over the issue.

None succeeded, but things certainly looked grim for Bell in 1887 when the US Government moved to withdraw his patent on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. An eventual Supreme Court ruling supported Bell.

too larry said:

1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone in the US

As everyone knows, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Or did he? He was certainly granted a patent on this day for the device. But over a 20-year period the Bell Telephone Company which he founded faced more than 600 court challenges over the issue.

None succeeded, but things certainly looked grim for Bell in 1887 when the US Government moved to withdraw his patent on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. An eventual Supreme Court ruling supported Bell.

Telephone Invention Dispute? That Rings a Bell

There was fierce competition among 19th Century inventors to come up with a working telephone. Alexander Graham Bell won and was granted a patent on this day.

www.onthisday.com

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And they have been keeping women out of our hair ever since...

raratt said:

And they have been keeping women out of our hair ever since...

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Or keeping you on the line at work while they talk about all the same stuff that you just talked about at breakfast.

BarnBuster said:

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On March 9, 1959, the first Barbie doll goes on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.​

Eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blond hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features. The woman behind Barbie was Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel, Inc. with her husband in 1945. After seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play make-believe with paper dolls of adult women, Handler realized there was an important niche in the market for a toy that allowed little girls to imagine the future.

Barbie’s appearance was modeled on a doll named Lilli, based on a German comic strip character. Originally marketed as a racy gag gift to adult men in tobacco shops, the Lilli doll later became extremely popular with children. Mattel bought the rights to Lilli and made its own version, which Handler named after her daughter, Barbara. With its sponsorship of the “Mickey Mouse Club” TV program in 1955, Mattel became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children. They used this medium to promote their new toy, and by 1961, the enormous consumer demand for the doll led Mattel to release a boyfriend for Barbie. Handler named him Ken, after her son. Barbie’s best friend, Midge, came out in 1963; her little sister, Skipper, debuted the following year.

Over the years, Barbie generated huge sales—and a lot of controversy. On the positive side, many women saw Barbie as providing an alternative to traditional 1950s gender roles. She has had a series of different jobs, from airline stewardess, doctor, pilot and astronaut to Olympic athlete and even U.S. presidential candidate. Others thought Barbie’s never-ending supply of designer outfits, cars and “Dream Houses” encouraged kids to be materialistic. It was Barbie’s appearance that caused the most controversy, however. Her tiny waist and enormous breasts–it was estimated that if she were a real woman, her measurements would be 36-18-38–led many to claim that Barbie provided little girls with an unrealistic and harmful example and fostered negative body image.

Despite the criticism, sales of Barbie-related merchandise continued to soar, topping 1 billion dollars annually by 1993. Since 1959, over one billion dolls in the Barbie family have been sold around the world and Barbie is now a bona fide global icon.

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The other day Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me was doing a review of their old shows. One of the guest was a lady who had worked for NASA and done time on the space station. She went to Mattel with plans for an Astronaut Barbie, and they turned her down. So she bought up a bunch of old dolls and made space suits for them herself. After posting online, she got a cease and desist letter from them. She said, no problem, I'll just go to the media and tell them you guys don't support STEM girls. They changed their mind, and made her (actually her 30 year younger self) the model for the new doll.

"Just before breakfast on the morning of March 11,1918, Private Albert Gitchell of the U.S. Army reports to the hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas, complaining of the cold-like symptoms of sore throat, fever and headache. By noon, over 100 of his fellow soldiers had reported similar symptoms, marking what are believed to be the first cases in the historic influenza pandemic of 1918, later known as Spanish flu. The flu would eventually kill 675,000 Americans and an estimated 20 million to 50 million people around the world, proving to be a far deadlier force than even the First World War.

The initial outbreak of the disease, reported at Fort Riley in March, was followed by similar outbreaks in army camps and prisons in various regions of the country. The disease soon traveled to Europe with the American soldiers heading to aid the Allies on the battlefields of France. (In March 1918 alone, 84,000 American soldiers headed across the Atlantic; another 118,000 followed them the next month.) Once it arrived on a second continent, the flu showed no signs of abating: 31,000 cases were reported in June in Great Britain. The disease was soon dubbed the Spanish flu due to the shockingly high number of deaths in Spain (some 8 million, it was reported) after the initial outbreak there in May 1918.

The flu showed no mercy for combatants on either side of the trenches. Over the summer, the first wave of the epidemic hit German forces on the Western Front, where they were waging a final, no-holds-barred offensive that would determine the outcome of the war. It had a significant effect on the already weakening morale of the troops—as German army commander Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote on August 3: poor provisions, heavy losses, and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of men in the III Infantry Division. Meanwhile, the flu was spreading fast beyond the borders of Western Europe, due to its exceptionally high rate of virulence and the massive transport of men on land and aboard ship due to the war effort. By the end of the summer, numerous cases had been reported in Russia, North Africa and India; China, Japan, the Philippines and even New Zealand would eventually fall victim as well.

The Great War ended on November 11, but influenza continued to wreak international havoc, flaring again in the U.S. in an even more vicious wave with the return of soldiers from the war and eventually infecting an estimated 28 percent of the country’s population before it finally petered out. In its December 28, 1918, issue, the American Medical Association acknowledged the end of one momentous conflict and urged the acceptance of a new challenge: fighting infectious disease."

BarnBuster said:

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"Just before breakfast on the morning of March 11,1918, Private Albert Gitchell of the U.S. Army reports to the hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas, complaining of the cold-like symptoms of sore throat, fever and headache. By noon, over 100 of his fellow soldiers had reported similar symptoms, marking what are believed to be the first cases in the historic influenza pandemic of 1918, later known as Spanish flu. The flu would eventually kill 675,000 Americans and an estimated 20 million to 50 million people around the world, proving to be a far deadlier force than even the First World War.

The initial outbreak of the disease, reported at Fort Riley in March, was followed by similar outbreaks in army camps and prisons in various regions of the country. The disease soon traveled to Europe with the American soldiers heading to aid the Allies on the battlefields of France. (In March 1918 alone, 84,000 American soldiers headed across the Atlantic; another 118,000 followed them the next month.) Once it arrived on a second continent, the flu showed no signs of abating: 31,000 cases were reported in June in Great Britain. The disease was soon dubbed the Spanish flu due to the shockingly high number of deaths in Spain (some 8 million, it was reported) after the initial outbreak there in May 1918.

The flu showed no mercy for combatants on either side of the trenches. Over the summer, the first wave of the epidemic hit German forces on the Western Front, where they were waging a final, no-holds-barred offensive that would determine the outcome of the war. It had a significant effect on the already weakening morale of the troops—as German army commander Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote on August 3: poor provisions, heavy losses, and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of men in the III Infantry Division. Meanwhile, the flu was spreading fast beyond the borders of Western Europe, due to its exceptionally high rate of virulence and the massive transport of men on land and aboard ship due to the war effort. By the end of the summer, numerous cases had been reported in Russia, North Africa and India; China, Japan, the Philippines and even New Zealand would eventually fall victim as well.

The Great War ended on November 11, but influenza continued to wreak international havoc, flaring again in the U.S. in an even more vicious wave with the return of soldiers from the war and eventually infecting an estimated 28 percent of the country’s population before it finally petered out. In its December 28, 1918, issue, the American Medical Association acknowledged the end of one momentous conflict and urged the acceptance of a new challenge: fighting infectious disease."

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I learned this week why it was called the Spanish Flu. Spain was not in the war, so there was no state control of their media. They were the first to openly report it in the press, but not the first to have it.

On March 16, 2008, Bear Stearns, the 85-year-old investment bank, narrowly avoids bankruptcy by its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. at the shockingly low price of $2 per share.

With a stock market capitalization of $20 billion in early 2007, Bear Stearns seemed to be riding high. But its increasing involvement in the hedge-fund business, particularly with risky mortgage-backed securities, paved the way for it to become one of the earliest casualties of the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession.

Housing boom goes bust

In the early to mid-2000s, as home prices in the United States rose, lenders began giving mortgages to borrowers whose poor credit would otherwise have prohibited them from obtaining a mortgage.

With the housing market booming, Bear Stearns and other investment banks became heavily involved in selling complex securities based on these subprime mortgages, with little regard for how risky they would turn out to be.

After peaking in mid-2006, housing prices began to decline rapidly, and many of these subprime borrowers began defaulting on their mortgages. Mortgage originators started feeling the effects of the crisis first: New Century Financial, which specialized in subprime mortgages, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2007.

In June, Bear Stearns was forced to pay some $3.2 billion to bail out the High-Grade Structured-Credit Strategies Fund, which specialized in risky investments like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs).

The following month, the firm revealed that the High-Grade fund and another related hedge fund had lost nearly all of their value due to the steep decline in the subprime mortgage market.

Bear Stearns collapses

For the fourth quarter of 2007, Bear recorded a loss for the first time in some 80 years, and CEO James Cayne was forced to step down; Alan Schwartz replaced him in January 2008.

Barely two months later, the collapse of Bear Stearns unfolded swiftly over the course of a few days. It began on Tuesday, March 11, when the Federal Reserve announced a $50 billion lending facility to help struggling financial institutions. That same day, the rating agency Moody’s downgraded many of Bear’s mortgage-backed securities to B and C levels (or “junk bonds”).

Unlike a regular bank, which can use cash from depositors to fund its operations, an investment bank like Bear Stearns often relied on short-term (even overnight) funding deals known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.”

In this type of deal, Bear offered bundles of securities to another firm or an investor (such as a hedge fund) in exchange for cash, which it would then use to finance its operations for a brief period of time.

Relying on repos—which all Wall Street investment banks did to some degree—meant that any loss of confidence in a firm’s reputation could lead investors to pull crucial funding at any time, putting the firm’s future in immediate jeopardy.

Taken together, Moody’s downgrade and the Fed’s announcement (which was seen as an anticipation of Bear’s failure) destroyed investors’ confidence in the firm, leading them to pull out their investments and refuse to enter into any more repo agreements.

By Thursday evening, March 13, Bear had less than $3 billion on hand, not enough to open its doors for business the following day.

J.P. Morgan Chase cuts a deal

Schwartz called on J.P. Morgan Chase, which managed the firm’s cash, to ask for an emergency loan, and told the Federal Reserve chairman, Timothy Geithner, that his firm would go bankrupt if the loan didn’t come through.

The Fed agreed to provide an emergency loan, through J.P. Morgan, of an unspecified amount to keep Bear afloat. But soon after the New York Stock Exchange opened on Friday, March 14, Bear’s stock price began plummeting.

By Saturday, J.P. Morgan Chase concluded that Bear Stearns was worth only $236 million. Desperately seeking a solution that would stop Bear’s failure from spreading to other over-leveraged banks (such as Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup) the Federal Reserve called its first emergency weekend meeting in 30 years.

On Sunday evening, March 16, Bear’s board of directors agreed to sell the firm to J.P. Morgan Chase for $2 per share—a 93 percent discount from Bear’s closing stock price on Friday. (Subsequent negotiations pushed the final price up to $10 per share.) The Fed lent J.P. Morgan Chase up to $30 billion to make the purchase.

Harbinger of the Recession

The unexpected downfall of the nation’s fifth largest investment bank, founded in 1923, shocked the financial world and sent global markets tumbling.

As it turned out, Bear Stearns would be only the first in a string of financial firms brought low by the combination of income losses and diminishing confidence in the market.

In September 2008, Bank of America Corp. quickly purchased the struggling Merrill Lynch, while venerable Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy, a stunning failure that would kick off an international banking crisis and drive the nation into the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” President Bush and his advisors built much of their case for war on the idea that Iraq, under dictator Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of building weapons of mass destruction.

Hostilities began about 90 minutes after the U.S.-imposed deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war passed. The first targets, which Bush said were “of military importance,” were hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. fighter-bombers and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf. In response to the attacks, Republic of Iraq radio in Baghdad announced, “the evil ones, the enemies of God, the homeland and humanity, have committed the stupidity of aggression against our homeland and people.”

Though Saddam Hussein had declared in early March 2003 that, “it is without doubt that the faithful will be victorious against aggression,” he went into hiding soon after the American invasion, speaking to his people only through an occasional audiotape. Coalition forces were able to topple his regime and capture Iraq’s major cities in just three weeks, sustaining few casualties. President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003. Despite the defeat of conventional military forces in Iraq, an insurgency has continued an intense guerrilla war in the nation in the years since military victory was announced, resulting in thousands of coalition military, insurgent and civilian deaths.

After an intense manhunt, U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A soldier at the scene described him as “a man resigned to his fate.” Hussein was arrested and began trial for crimes against his people, including mass killings, in October 2005.

In June 2004, the provisional government in place since soon after Saddam’s ouster transferred power to the Iraqi Interim Government. In January 2005, the Iraqi people elected a 275-member Iraqi National Assembly. A new constitution for the country was ratified that October. On November 6, 2006, Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was executed on December 30, 2006.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. The U.S. declared an end to the war in Iraq on December 15, 2011, nearly ten years after the fighting began.