Mind Blowing Wall-Street Facts

It's at the heart of America's financial industry, the place where traders can earn big or lose everything. Here are ten facts about Wall Street.

Wall Street was originally called "de Waal Straat", named by the Dutch when New York was a Dutch Settlement known as New Amsterdam. It is believed that it was named Wall Street because of a wall built by the Dutch to protect the area from the British. Wall Street is often used as a term to refer to the financial part of New York. However, although New York's financial district is quite large, Wall Street itself is a street that runs for 8 blocks from Broadway to South Street in the financial district of New York and is just under half a mile long. Wall Street became associated with business and finance after 24 traders signed an agreement to trade stocks with each other and begin the New York Stock and Exchange Board. The agreement was signed under a buttonwood (sycamore) tree in Wall Street and is known as the Buttonwood Agreement. The New York Stock and Exchange Board later became known as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and is situated on Broad Street, just off a corner of Wall Street. Also on Wall Street is NASDAQ. 

Wall Street and its surrounding financial district make New York the second in a list of the world's financial centres according to the Global Financial Centres Index. Top of the list is London, England. In 1929, the stock market collapsed in what is now known as the Wall Street Crash. This was basically the result of prices of stocks and shares falling suddenly after rising gradually throughout the 1920s. During this decade, as more and more people invested money (quite often money that they had been loaned), the value of stocks and shares rose to the point that they were valued at much more than they were actually worth. As some investors began to realise this, they decided to sell their investments to cash in on them. Panic selling soon followed. This caused share prices to suddenly fall, with the first large drop in their value occurring on Thursday 24th October 1929. More traders decided to sell up on the following Monday and Tuesday leading to the collapse of the market. These days are all now known as Black Thursday, Black Monday and Black Tuesday. Many people believe that the Wall Street Crash was a major cause of the Great Depression which affected the economies of many countries during the 1930s. It is often said that the Wall Street Crash resulted in several traders jumping out of windows to commit suicide after losing almost everything. In fact, between Black Thursday and the end of 1929, there were 100 suicides or suicide attempts in New York. Only four were linked to the Wall Street Crash.

"Wall Street" was a movie released in 1987 which examined the 1980s culture of greed and financial excess that defined the decade. It was directed by Oliver Stone and starred Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Daryl Hannah and Martin Sheen. It was followed by a sequel in 2010 which was again directed by Oliver Stone. Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen returned for it. The film also starred Shia LaBeouf.

Illuminati

Everyone has seen it - the so-called "All-Seeing Eye", following the world's population around, controlling it, not allowing people to live their lives in peace. This beady eye is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful - and it is allegedly the symbol of an influential secret society known as the Illuminati.

People may have heard of the concept of the Illuminati, but they cannot be sure whether or not it is the stuff of myth, legend and superstition, or whether this organisation really has infiltrated every aspect of society and controls the population of the world.

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), founder of the Bavarian Illuminati

Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that the Illuminati is still at large, controlling the world on a global scale due to its presence inside worldwide financial institutions, national governments and even multi-national organisations.

Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle (sometimes also referred to as the Devil's Triangle) is a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by a line from Florida to the islands of Bermuda, to Puerto Rico and then back to Florida. It is one of the biggest mysteries of our time - that perhaps isn't really a mystery.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first used in an article written by Vincent H. Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964. In the article, Gaddis claimed that in this strange sea a number of ships and planes had disappeared without explanation. Gaddis wasn't the first one to come to this conclusion, either. As early as 1952, George X. Sands, in a report in Fate magazine, noted what seemed like an unusually large number of strange accidents in that region.

In 1969 John Wallace Spencer wrote a book called Limbo of the Lost specifically about the Triangle and, two years later, a feature documentary on the subject, The Devil's Triangle, was released. These, along with the bestseller The Bermuda Triangle, published in 1974, permanently registered the legend of the "Hoodoo Sea" within popular culture.

Why do ships and planes seem to go missing in the region? Some authors suggested it may be due to a strange magnetic anomaly that affects compass readings (in fact they claim Columbus noted this when he sailed through the area in 1492). Others theorize that methane eruptions from the ocean floor may suddenly be turning the sea into a froth that can't support a ship's weight so it sinks (though there is no evidence of this type of thing happening in the Triangle for the past 15,000 years). Several books have gone as far as conjecturing that the disappearances are due to an intelligent, technologically advanced race living in space or under the sea.

Article Courtesy: http://www.unmuseum.org/

Antarctica’s Mysterious ‘Blood Falls’

The “falls” are actually a brine, or salt water, mixed with iron from the bedrock below. As bacteria slowly chew the rock, the iron is released into the brine. The salt water and iron combination creates a distinct rust color when it mixes with oxygen as it reaches the surface, according to National Geographic.

Blood Falls is a bright red waterfall oozing from Antarctica’s ice. It’s nearly five stories high, in the McMurdo Dry Valley region, one of the coldest and most inhospitable places on Earth, a place scientists like to compare to the cold, dry deserts of Mars. Geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki, now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, published what’s still accepted as the best explanation for Blood Falls in 2009.