On June 25, 1950, at dawn on a Sunday morning, 200,000 North Korean troops stormed into South Korea.  The next day, the Dow fell a staggering 4.7% (-10.44 points), to 213.91, the largest one-day drop since 1937, and the worst single-day decline we would see again until 1962. 

For the week of June 26-30, 1950, the Dow fell 15.24 points (6.8%), to 209.11, the worst weekly drop since the 1930s.  The obvious cause was shock at the outbreak of war in Korea that week.

Benchmarks of American History on June 25

1876: Civil War "boy general" George Armstrong Custer intended to ride General Grant's coat-tails into the Presidency, but he had a bad hair day: The golden-locked boy general got scalped at Little Big Horn, Montana, thinking he was in the midst of a glorious Presidential juggernaut.

1929: President Herbert Hoover authorized the building of Boulder Dam (later: Hoover Dam)

1938: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the first minimum wage law in the U.S., at $0.25 per hour, along with a maximum 44-hour work week for minors.

1942: General Dwight D. Eisenhower was named Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.  FDR and Churchill agreed that his organizational skills surpassed the British General Montgomery.

Early Television History

1951: CBS broadcast the first color TV program, featuring Arthur Godfrey, Faye Emerson, Sam Levenson and Ed Sullivan. No consumers had color TVs, so the 4-hour program was viewed on 40 color TV sets at CBS outlets in Boston, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

1956: TV cameras covered rescue efforts after the collision of the two ships "Andrea Doria" and "Stockholm" (off Cape Cod, Massachusetts).  Despite those rescue efforts, 51 died.

1973: John Dean began three days of televised testimony with the Senate Watergate Committee in Washington.  Dean implicated President Nixon, thus violating lawyer-client privilege.  

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