“There has long been a tension in Christianity between economic concerns and providing a way to commune with the sacred. Nowhere was this more apparent in medieval Europe than with the bodies of holy persons (saints’ relics).”
“Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8% between January and March 1933.”
“The early history of Silicon Valley is incomplete unless it is framed within the context of American foreign policy. The Federal Telegraph Company, the region’s first major high technology firm, received its first contract from the U.S. Navy in 1913. Its subsequent success relied not only on navy contracts but also on State Department support and access to Bureau of Standards technology.”
“The formation of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) in 1926 was a unique experiment in interwar Britain: it was the first, publicly funded marketing board in the UK that sought to encourage domestic consumption of empire foodstuffs and raw materials… the Board aimed to increase public awareness of the strong economic interdependence between Britain and its Empire.”