Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Happy birthday, Diamond Jim Fisk
It is the birthday of Diamond Jim Fisk (1835), one of the Gilded Age robber barons remembered for causing Black Friday on September 24, 1869, by trying to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange, thus ruining many investors. He battled Cornelius Vanderbilt over control of the Erie Railroad, and was notorious for openly bribing legislatures and buying off judges in the Boss Tweed era. He died at age 36, shot by a former business associate who had run off with Fisk’s mistress.
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