Shares of Microsoft Corporation became available 30 years ago today when that company executed its initial public offering. The price was $21 per share, and it was so successful that Bill Gates was suddenly worth approximately $350 million. If you had purchased 100 shares that day and held onto them, 25 years later you would have been the owner of 28,800 shares worth $750,000 after nine stock splits. At top is its logo from the era.

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“At Fillmore East,” the live album by the Allman Brothers Band, was recorded 45 years ago tonight at that New York City venue. “Whipping Post” from that album (below the fold):
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The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place five years ago today. A tsunami that formed after the Tōhoku earthquake flooded the six-reactor complex, which caused electrical failures and ultimately, three nuclear meltdowns.

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President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his first “Fireside chat” with the American people over the national radio networks on this date in 1933, one week after he took office. Most of his radio talks were on Sundays, as this first one was; he gave a total of 30 such explanatory speeches between 1933 and 1944. “On the Banking Crisis” was the first. The term “fireside chat” was not employed immediately, but by the second chat, delivered on May 7, the speeches were known by that name. It is estimated that up to 60 million Americans listened. Audio (below the fold):
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“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”—Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Douglas Adams was born on this date in 1952.

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The costliest natural disaster in world history took place five years ago today. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami started with a magnitude 9.0 megathrust earthquake—the most powerful to ever hit Japan and the fourth most powerful in recorded history and one that shifted the entire planet on its axis by half a foot—followed by a tsunami that struck the Sendai area particularly hard (100 foot waves reached several miles inland) and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex, which led to several nuclear meltdowns at that facility. The World Bank has estimated that the combined cost of these several events topped $235 billion. More than 15,000 individuals lost their lives in the quake-tsunami event.
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