Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Spotlight
Charles Dow was a young reporter in the 1870s covering municipal news in Rhode Island's state capital, Providence. After spending a few days on assignment in Colorado with a group of bankers interested in selling the idea of investing in silver mining, he became interested in the financial world. The next year, Dow moved to New York City and worked at writing (by hand!) daily financial newsletters for banks and brokerage houses. He and another reporter, Edward Davis Jones, founded a financial news agency, Dow, Jones and Company. Many times a day, they would write financial stories and analysis and send them by messenger to subscribers in Manhattan. They added a third partner, Charles Bergstresser, and dozens of reporters. The size of the newletter grew, as did readership and on this date in 1889, the first issue of their attempt at a real newspaper — The Wall Street Journal — was published.

Quote
"The truth in its proper use." — The Wall Street Journal's founding motto

Question of the Day
What is the history behind the charging bull statue near Wall Street?
The Charging Bull (sometimes called the Wall Street Bull or the Bowling Green Bull) is a 3,200 kg (7,000 pound) bronze sculpture by Arturo Di Modica that sits in Bowling Green park near Wall Street in New York City. The depiction of a bull, leaning back on its haunches, with its head lowered and ready to charge, is a symbol of a prosperous financial market.

The sculpture has become a tourist destination in the Financial District. It has also come to be an unofficial symbol of the Financial District itself, and it often appears in the local news media to punctuate stories about optimism in the financial market.
The sculptor, Di Modica, designed and made the statue as a gift to the people of New York City, hoping to bring back optimism after the 1987 stock market crash and as a symbol of the "strength and power of the American people." He spent some $360,000 to create and install the sculpture. He chose a site in Lower Manhattan, placing it under a Christmas tree in the middle of Broad Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange. The sculpture was an instant hit, but since it was placed without a permit, the police removed it to an impound lot. Public outcry was immediate. The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation responded by moving the bull to a spot two blocks south of the Stock Exchange, where it now resides in the plaza at Bowling Green, facing up Broadway.

Rugby Ball

Word of the day
rugby

game that originated (1823), according to tradition, on the playing fields of Rugby, England. It is related to both soccer and American football. The game is said to have started when a Rugby School student named William Webb Ellis playing soccer picked up the ball and ran downfield with it instead of kicking it. Other English schools and universities adopted the style in the mid-19th cent....
(© Columbia University Press)

Today's History

The Liberty Bell

• Liberty Bell: was rung to call Philadelphia citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Oklahoma!: the Broadway musical's soundtrack became the first album to go gold (indicating one million sales), as certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (1958)

Today's Birthdays

Kevin Bacon

• Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695): poet and fabulist
• Nelson A. Rockefeller (1908-1979): governor of NY and vice president under Gerald Ford; his grandfather, industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) shared his birth date
• Anna Quindlen (57): journalist and author, One True Thing
• Kevin Bacon (51): actor, The Woodsman, Frost/Nixon; also, actors Jeffrey Tambor (65), Anjelica Huston (58), Billy Crudup and Michael Weatherly (both 41), Kim Darby (62), Milo Ventimiglia (32), Sophia Bush (27) and Jake McDorman (23)
• Andy Fletcher (48): rocker, co-founder of Depeche Mode; musicians Jerry Vale (77), Steve Lawrence (74), Raffi (61), Toby Keith (48) and Beck (39)