The world’s first publicly traded company was the United East India Co.

The first ever IPO was issued by the Dutch East India Co., a spice company

It first offered shares to the public in the 1600s on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange to help finance its passages. The Dutch East India Co. succeeded in part due to its monopolistic hold over the East Indies at the time.

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.

The world's oldest stock exchange was called the Amsterdam Stock Exchange

What is now referred to as Euronext Amsterdam got its start centuries ago, in the early 1600s. Back then, it was called the Amsterdam Stock Exchange—and it might not have existed without the Dutch East India Co.'s desire to raise funding for its seafaring ventures.

How one man placed the first short against the Dutch East India Company

Isaac Le Maire, a Dutch businessman and cofounder of the Dutch East India Company, is said to be history's first short seller, betting against the Dutch East India Company's stock price. Le Maire, who had been fired from the spice trading company over an unclear financial dispute, began spreading false rumours about the company to encourage people to sell their stock in order to tank its value.

A trading company became Britain's most powerful imperial force

The East India Company began as a private merchant venture and grew into Britain’s dominant power in India—amassing wealth, fielding armies, and governing tens of millions until the Crown took direct control in 1858.

Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholders

From the Dutch East India Company paying out the first dividends over 400 years ago to the word “dividend’s” ancient Latin roots, Dividend.com has a full explainer of this investing perk and how individuals can earn income while holding dividend-paying stocks or ETFs.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

The South Sea Bubble was an 18th-century scandal that redefined speculation

This video illustrates how the South Sea Company in Britain sparked a stock boom in 1720, with promises of huge trading profits, driving shares to unprecedented heights before a sudden crash wiped out the fortunes of investors—including Isaac Newton, who lost an estimated £20K.

The 'big bang' of the dot-com era: Netscape's stock price doubled on the day of its initial public offering

The company behind the browser that revolutionized search went public on August 9, 1995. Just before the IPO, the company increased its initial opening price from $14 to $28. On the day the company went public, shares traded as high as $71 before closing at $58.25. The company's market capitalization exceeded $2B. The eye-popping IPO is largely considered the beginning of the dot-com bubble.

The American Research and Development Corporation is considered the first modern VC firm

Best known for investing in companies that wanted to utilize some of the technology developed during World War II, the ARDC’s cofounders all held prestigious positions at places like MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

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.

The first private equity fund was launched in 1960

At the time, the industry—and the public's understanding of it—was rather limited, and few private equity firms existed until the 1980s. The first leveraged buyout is thought to have taken place in 1955.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

Benjamin Franklin founded America's first lending library in 1731

Franklin convinced members of his intellectual club to pool resources and purchase books none could afford individually. The Library Company of Philadelphia was founded with 50 shareholders, each contributing 40 shillings, and served as the unofficial, de facto Library of Congress from the Revolutionary War until 1800.

The cryptocurrency equivalent of going public

An initial coin offering (ICO) is cryptocurrency's version of an initial public offering (IPO). Similar to the way a company offers shares on the stock market for the first time, ICOs occur when a cryptocurrency company seeks to raise funding for a new coin, app, or service. If you're entering the field, get the details on how it all works.

Ride along on one coffee company’s journey through the stock market

From going public with an initial public offering, to struggling with how negative news coverage impacts a stock’s value, this video lets you put yourself in the shoes of a newly public company. This makes learning about the inner workings of the stock market much easier.

A timeline of colonial settlement

An overview of early American settlement, beginning with the London Company's expedition to Virginia. Source includes a number of citations for further reading.

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.

See an image of the earliest surviving coupons used in America

This clip from the "Acquired" podcast shows an image of one of the original Coca-Cola coupons. The hosts argue that the coupons helped popularize Coca-Cola in its early days, making them a key component in the story of one of the world's most iconic brands.

The world's 50 most valuable private companies

While public companies typically have the highest valuations, private companies get close. This list breaks down the top 50 as of 2025, with SpaceX at the top with a value of $350B, followed by ByteDance. Over three-fifths of the list are located in the US, with eight in China.

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, sent its first passengers to space in 2021

Founded in 2000, Bezos spent many years working on the company as a side project before it became more well-known around 2004, when a plot of land in Texas was purchased as a launch site for the company’s rockets. He has said that the goal of Blue Origin is to build “reusable space vehicles.” This resource details what passengers experience from takeoff to landing on a Blue Origin flight.

Warren Buffett began investing at 11 years old

He then bought his first property at 14 years old. From studying under the “father of value investing” to revitalizing a textile company into the largest holding company in the world, Buffett’s career is one of great financial success.

Francis Drake: favored English pirate who sailed around the world

Before becoming the global explorer that many know him as today, Sir Francis Drake was a pirate, merchant, and slave trader. This in-depth article dives into the life of Drake, who's commonly credited as the first person to circumnavigate the globe by ship successfully.

The origins of the Guinness Book of World Records

Yes, it was the beer company that started it. In 1955, the very first edition of the Guinness Book of World Records debuted as a marketing campaign for the famous Irish beer brand. Get all the details on the origins here.

The term 'startup' can be traced back to a 1976 Forbes article

The magazine article included what’s widely considered the first recorded use of the word “startup.” The following year, the publication Business Week went on to use the term in a piece as well.

American Express debuted its first charge card in 1958 to give travelers access to cash abroad

The original American Express charge card was made of purple paperboard and allowed customers to book travel. Unlike credit cards, the card's balance had to be entirely paid off each month. When the card first launched, 250,000 customers used it, and 17,500 companies had agreed to accept it.

Charles Schwab kick-starts zero-commission era for retail investors

Throughout history, retail investing was often too expensive for many individuals. That’s because investors owed the cost of the trade as well as the commission and fees due to the broker. Charles Schwab revolutionized the retail investing landscape in 2019 when it announced it would slash all fees on stock trading. This quickly prompted other brokerages to follow suit. Read more in this article.

Cholera went global thanks to global trade

The first cholera pandemic grew from an outbreak in India, in 1817. Scientists suggest it spread from there throughout the continent and onward to Africa, Russia and Europe through the poop of traders.

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.

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

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

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

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

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.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

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

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

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.

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

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.