The history of Wall Street as a financial center dates back to the 1700s

In 1711, the New York City Common Council decided that the city’s slave market would operate on Wall Street

In 1711, the New York City Common Council decided that the city’s slave market would operate on Wall Street. Back then, the nation’s economy rode on the backs of slave labor and the slave trade itself—meaning that the slave market’s location was an economic hub for the city.

A timeline of Wall Street's history

Wall Street's historical timeline starts with Wall Street getting its name in the 1600s and ends with details about the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

Wall Street has come a long way since the 1600s

Wall Street originated as part of a Dutch settlement and soon became the nation's financial hub. But Wall Street has since morphed into eight blocks of luxury gyms and apartments.

A history of stock exchanges, from Venitain merchants to modern day

While the idea of stock exchanges—markets where securities can be bought and sold—is mostly synonymous with Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and other modern markets, places to buy and sell financial instruments have a long history....

The New York Stock Exchange was started in 1792

When it first opened, traders would meet both outside on the street and in coffee shops to do business. Today, the NYSE is known as one of the most important financial institutions in the world.

The origin and history of stock exchanges

When were stocks first sold? Though debt was first sold in Venice in the 14th century, stocks proper began in the Netherlands. To fund its spice trade across the world in 1602, the Dutch East India Company sold stocks to individual investors, a novel approach to raising funds. It was the Dutch West India Company that founded New York—the site of some of the world’s greatest stock exchanges. Listen to a concise historical overview here.

As technology evolved, so did Wall Street

Before the telephone was invented in the mid 1800s, people had to trade stocks in person. But once office telephones and computers became commonplace, banks and other financial institutions didn't necessarily need to have their headquarters near exchanges like Wall Street's New York Stock Exchange.

Mapping early New York

Want to see how Wall Street (and New York City as a whole) has changed over time? Use this timeline and map to see Manhattan today overlaid with the precise boundaries of early land grants to the Dutch in the 1600s. Scroll through the progress of city building through the first century of European settlement there.

The Erie Canal transformed New York City into America’s banking capital

By redirecting western trade through New York Harbor, the canal turned New York into the nation’s commercial hub. This surge in commerce shifted financial power from Philadelphia to Wall Street, establishing the city as America’s banking capital.

The story of Wall Street's Charging Bull statue

In New York City's Financial District, there's a bronze statue of a bull that attracts tourists from all over the world. But how did it get there, and what is it about the statue that makes people line up for photographs, day after day? Journalist PJ Vogt dives into the Charging Bull statue's origin story in a podcast episode (warning: some mature language).

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City’s Financial District in 2001, many banks decided to relocate

Much has been said about why today’s top banks are typically no longer headquartered on Wall Street itself. The terrorist attacks in New York City’s Financial District on Sept. 11, 2001, are one reason many banks decided to relocate.

The best movies about Wall Street

From Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to “American Psycho” starring Christian Bale, Hollywood has no shortage of Wall-Street-centric filmography. These films often distinguish themselves by interrogating why excess wealth and success are so often deemed synonymous in American culture.

The Dow Jones & Company began as a small news service in 1882

Founded in 1882 by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser, Dow Jones & Company started with hand-delivered market bulletins. Today it’s a global financial news giant, best known for publishing The Wall Street Journal.

How JPMorgan Chase became America's biggest bank

From the railroad and steel consolidations brokered by John Pierpont Morgan on Wall Street more than a century ago, to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the financial crisis, and Jamie Dimon’s leadership, J.P. Morgan Chase has been at the center of finance for more than a century.

The history behind the country's first Black-owned bookstore

In 1834, the first Black-owned book store was opened in New York City by abolitionist David Ruggles. Ruggles founded an antislavery newspaper and was an organizer for what eventually became the Underground Railroad. His bookstore was dedicated to abolitionist literature but was also a meeting place and lending library for Black people, including those who had escaped slavery.

The term ‘Black Friday’ originally referred to a 1869 US gold market crash

After financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the US gold market, the market crashed on September 24, 1869, bankrupting thousands of investors and sending stock prices plummeting by 18%. That day became known as “Black Friday” long before the unofficial retail holiday emerged.

The origins of modern family offices date back to the 1500s

Wealth management for families with massive fortunes has evolved over the centuries, with the Rockefellers establishing the first single-family office in 1882.

Hamilton built the foundations of the US financial system as the nation's first Treasury secretary

Appointed the nation's first Treasury secretary in 1789 by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton designed a powerful federal finance system—repaying war debts, creating new taxes, founding a national bank, and promoting economic development.

'Black Wall Street': the affluent neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Black-owned businesses once thrived

A white mob destroyed Black Wall Street in 1921. America also had other "Black Wall Street" neighborhoods in places like Richmond, Virginia.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was first erected in 1931 by construction workers

The tradition of erecting a tree in Rockefeller Center officially began two years later, when the company continued what the Depression-impacted workers had started. Today, its lighting and nearby ice skating draw millions annually, making it one of America’s most famous holiday traditions.

The Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets is a place to discuss high-risk trading strategies

r/WallStreetBets is a forum (aka a “subreddit”) on the social media platform Reddit that was started in 2012. Later, r/WallStreetBets evolved into a place where unconventional investment approaches were not just tolerated, but planned and celebrated. It’s perhaps most famous for its role in the GameStop saga.

Mutual funds were first created and sold in the US in 1924

Mutual funds were created in 1924, became popular in the '80s and '90s when investors saw a better payoff. Since then, they’ve evolved to be one of the most popular investment options today.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Slavery in the US: a timeline

In 1619, a ship with 20 captives landed at Point Comfort in Virginia, ushering in the era of American slavery. Scroll through this timeline to learn more about slavery in the US and its long lasting effects.

The first recorded worker strike in the United States happened in 1768

That year, journeymen tailors went on strike to protest a wage reduction. By 1794, cobblers in Philadelphia formed the nation’s first trade union, the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers. But that’s just the beginning of labor union history in the US.

A landmark hedge fund court case once reshaped high finance

Hedge fund traders tied to insider trading by probing prosecutors are relatively rare. When billionaire hedge fund legend Steve Cohen, founder of SAC Capital, pleaded guilty to trading on inside information, Wall Street trembled. The outcome of the case remains a cautionary tale for traders today.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.