The Occupy Wall Street protests lasted 59 days

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.

The wealthiest Americans own the vast majority of the stock market

Recent data from the Federal Reserve shows that the richest people in America own 93% of all the country's stock—the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks.

Political sloganeering is often downstream of memes

In 2018, #JobsNotMobs morphed from an internet meme into a conservative slogan. A video clip of angry protesters mixed with news anchors discouraging the use of the word "mob" posted on October 11, birthed the phrase. By October 19, it was adapted into a Republican party slogan.

The US unemployment rate soared to over 24% during the Great Depression

The Great Depression was a devastating and prolonged economic recession that followed the crash of the US stock market in 1929.

The 2017 Women's March was one of the largest protests in the Mall's history

Held the day after Donald Trump's inauguration, the 2017 Women's March drew an estimated 470,000 to 500,000 people to Washington, DC, and 3 million to 5 million nationwide. It is widely regarded as the largest single-day protest in US history.

The US government has shut down 22 times since 1976

This resource breaks down every federal shutdown since 1976, showing how long each lasted and the budget disputes that caused them—revealing how routine funding failures have become in modern US politics.

Roughly $5T of stimulus money flooded the economy during the pandemic

Recessions can last anywhere from months to years. To encourage economic growth, governments use policy levers such as lowering interest rates or introducing a stimulus. Economists credit massive stimulus funds for helping the economy quickly recover from a recession during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘The Giant Pool of Money’ remains one of the most acclaimed accounts of the 2008 housing bubble

This Peabody Award–winning "This American Life" episode traces how cheap global money, subprime lending, and Wall Street engineering inflated the housing bubble. Through vivid reporting and real voices, it became one of the defining works of 2000s financial journalism.

11,000 new US dollar stores opened between 2007 and 2017

Dollar store retailers experienced significant fiscal gains during the 2010s, which were then accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But in recent years, dollar stores have been closing in large numbers and suffering financial hardship. Experts point to Walmart's strategy of decreasing prices to cater to inflation-fatigued customers, and point out that when Walmart does well financially, dollar stores typically suffer.

Student protests over endowments

College students across the country are urging their universities to divest from a range of companies—some tied to business in Israel, others linked to climate change. But what does “divestment” actually mean when it comes to billion-dollar endowments? In this episode of Planet Money, the hosts break down how endowment divestment works, and why its impact might not be as straightforward as protesters hope.

1970s New York was viewed by many as a city in decline

By 1975, the city owed $5B to $6B in short-term debt; over a million manufacturing jobs had left the city since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, the murder rate was more than double than 10 years earlier. Graffiti was seen as illegal vandalism perpetrated by unsupervised teenagers and was viewed by some as emblematic of the larger societal decline.

The Standing Rock Sioux led a nationwide protest movement against an oil pipeline crossing their land

Beginning in 2016, thousands gathered at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to block a crude oil pipeline that would run beneath Lake Oahe, the tribe's source of drinking water, and through a Sioux burial ground. The Obama administration halted construction, but Trump revived it weeks after taking office.

How the S&P 500 performed in the first 100 days of each modern US presidential term

The S&P 500 was up 5.3% during President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office during his first term as president, and down 7.1% during the first 100 days of his second term.

In 1979, Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days

Outraged by the US decision to allow the exiled Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, student protesters stormed the embassy in November 1979. The crisis paralyzed the Carter presidency and ended with a negotiated release on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

SoftBank acquired a majority stake in WeWork in October 2019

SoftBank is widely considered the biggest victim in the WeWork story, losing billions of dollars that it invested in the company while WeWork’s CEO walked away a billionaire himself.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shifted his focus toward economic justice in his final years

In the late 1960s, Dr. King increasingly emphasized economic inequality, labor rights, and poverty, culminating in the Poor People’s Campaign, which argued that civil rights gains were incomplete without financial security.

The G20 emerged from the 1997 Asian financial crisis as a forum for managing the global economy

Established in 1999 and elevated to a leaders' summit during the 2008 financial crisis, the G20 now unites the world's largest economies to address issues that the Bretton Woods institutions were not designed to manage.

Most people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions

Studies suggest that only 9% of Americans who make resolutions keep them; 23% quit by the end of the first week of the new year, and 43% quit by the end of January.

The Black Lives Matter movement coincided with the fall of the girlboss

It’s no coincidence that the white women who were seen as the faces of the girlboss movement (founders such as Audrey Gelman of The Wing and Christene Barberich of Refinery29, for instance) stepped away from their companies around the same time that America stepped into its era of racial reckoning with Black Lives Matter.

The women's suffrage movement spanned more than 70 years

The fight for women's right to vote formally began at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and concluded with the 19th Amendment in 1920—a seven-decade struggle led by activists including Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Wealthy patricians and poorer plebeians struggled for power for centuries

During the Roman Republic, the plebs sought political protection, more access to power, and freedom, while the patricians looked to protect their elite status and wealth. Plebeians regularly "seceded," or effectively went on strike and did not fight for the patricians.

Young Brazilians protested their country's hosting of the 2014 World Cup

In 2013, the Confederations Cup in Brazil was marked with widespread protests in a period dubbed "Generation June." Many were angry about the looming 2014 World Cup, which they believed was an affront to the country's many pressing issues.

Americans celebrated the end of the Revolutionary War with nationwide toasts

In 1783, citizens celebrated the signing of the Preliminary Articles of Peace with nationwide parties. Across the new country, many made 13 toasts to the 13 states. They also drank to George Washington. One poet in Boston wrote, “Health to his honor I’d freely drink, Had I a glass of wine; And whosoever with me shall think, May mix their toast with mine.”

The Soviet Union explained

From 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union spanned one-sixth of Earth’s landmass and housed nearly 300 million people. As the most significant test of Marxist governance, it sat at the center of the century’s defining struggle between capitalism and communism.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

The Aztec capital fell after a brutal 75-day siege

The violent Spanish conquest ended with a 75-day siege of Tenochtitlan, where thousands died as Spanish forces and their Indigenous allies overwhelmed the city of 200,000. This animated explainer breaks down how those alliances enabled the empire’s collapse.

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.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

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.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

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

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

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

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

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

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.