The hottest of mails
“HoTMaiL” — capitalized to represent HTML — launched to the Internet-browsing public on July 4, 1996. It was one of the earliest free webmail clients, and its launch date was symbolically chosen to celebrate its users’ “freedom” from service provider email. In these early Internet days, the service only offered two megabytes of mail storage, but that was enough for the nearly 9 million users who signed up in Hotmail’s first year-and-a-half online.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) bought Hotmail at the end of 1997 for approximately $400 million, and began integrating it with the MSN network of services. Today, Hotmail has been replaced by Outlook.com, which boasts over 400 million active accounts, many of which still direct to an @hotmail address. That makes Hotmail (or Outlook.com, as it’s now called) the second most-popular webmail client in the world.
You can have any color (including black)
The era of monochromatic cars ended on July 4, 1920, when a E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD) researcher accidentally discovered a nitrocellulose lacquer that it would soon call Duco. Until that point, cars had been almost exclusively painted black, because the finish was the fastest to dry — and “fast” is a bit of a stretch, when automobile paint took up to a month to dry. E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD) partnered with General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), in which it owned a substantial minority stake, to promote the new lacquer as a finish for new cars. It first appeared on General Motors Company (NYSE:GM)’s Oakland badge in 1924 and, within a year, even the Model T began to take on a more varied set of hues.
E I Du Pont De Nemours And Co (NYSE:DD) joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow Jones Indices:.DJI) in the same year that Duco first began adding color to the nation’s roads. Four years later, when the index expanded to 30 components, it had added three other automakers as well: Chrysler, Mack Trucks, and Nash Motors. That period also saw General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) rise from a distant second on the automaker production rankings to claim the global sales lead by 1931, which it held for nearly eight decades before finally losing the crown in 2008.
The article America Declares Its Dependence on the Financial Markets originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Alex Planes.
Fool contributor Alex Planes holds no financial position in any company mentioned here. Add him on Google+ or follow him on Twitter @TMFBiggles for more insight into markets, history, and technology. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors and NYSE Euronext. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft.
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