Remembering Pearl Harbor

Dec 7, a day to live in infamy as the attack on Pearl Harbor brought us fully into World War II.

military uniforms on display at Franklin Historical Museum

At the Franklin Historical Museum, there is a military uniform display that is open through December. One of the items (not pictured here) is a shirt worn at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack.

For those in the Franklin area, if you haven't had a chance to stop by to see the Museum, there are lots of treasures like this on display. It is worth a visit especially as it is free admission!

For more info on Pearl Harbor, this wikipedia page can get you started
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

For more info on the Franklin Historical Museum, you can visit their web page
http://www.franklinhistoricalmuseum.com/

David Christian: Big history

Spend about 18 minutes with David Christian as he talks about "Big History" at TED.





The Big History website can be found here

For more TED Talks, visit their website

Into the archives

Digging into the archives, let's see what the past has for us.

2009
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2009/11/laidoff-camp-attleboroprovidence-event.html

Hard to believe, it was a year ago that we were planning for LaidOff Camp and ended up canceling it. We have since been successful with two Job Search Jam Sessions!


2008
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2008/11/persuasive-leaders.html

Two years ago, a posting on persuasive leaders!


2007
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2007/11/hot-stove-planning-board.html

Yes, those were the early days of reporting in Franklin before Franklin Matters was created.


2006
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2006/11/revs-1-0-winners.html

And yes, the Revolution won the Conference Championship. Unfortunately, they are out this time around. Just this week Taylor Twellman made his decision to retire. As much as I would love to see him play again, taking a chance with the concussions he has had is not worth it! Soccer is only a game.


2005
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2005/11/book-reviews.html

My book reviews were put into a collection posting. I guess I haven't done a review in a while. Will need to fix that!


2004
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2004/11/authentic-communication.html

Almost as far back as I go on the web. Prior to this my writing was in my journals.

What do you have in your archives to share?

From Richard Sylla - insights on the Crash of '29

From the Wall Street Journal, a bit of history I had not recalled:

Because their teachers and their history books said so, most people know that the Great Crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression of the early 1930s. I am not one of these people.

What I know is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 306 the day before Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, and at 199 on November 13, three weeks later. That drop of 35 percent was the Great Crash. I also know that on April 17, 1930, the day before Good Friday, the Dow closed at 294, or 96 percent of its level before Black Thursday. In other words, almost all of the decline of the crash proper had been undone by a recovery of 48 percent in the Dow between Halloween ‘29 and Easter ‘30. Most people don’t know that, or if they ever did they forgot it.

On Good Friday ‘30, the New York Times referred not to the Great Crash, but to “the break in the market last Fall.” The Times that day also noted that the day before, April 17, “average prices worked higher and a few outstanding issues shot up smartly to new high prices for the year to date,” and that “British interests were investing heavily in these issues.”

The Great Depression began sometime after the spring of 1930, most likely when a lot of banks failed late that year. But the so-called Great Crash a year earlier had almost nothing to do with those bank failures, the first of thousands of bank failures that occurred from late 1930 to March 1933.

What’s interesting from the perspective of 2009 is that from September 12, 2008, the Friday before Lehman, to the low of March 9, 2009, the Dow lost 44 percent. The Great Crash of 2008-09 was actually a greater crash than the Great Crash of 1929. And half a year after the crash lows of last March, the Dow again is up about 50 percent, as it was half a year after October 1929.

Is the market’s recovery since March now giving us a better forecast of what lies ahead than it did in April 1930? Let’s hope so. Let’s hope, too, that people stop exaggerating the effects of “the break in the market” in October ‘29.

The original was posted to the Wall Street Journal here