The first speculative trading bubble in history occurred from 1634 to 1637 in the Dutch Golden Age, in which the trading of tulip bulbs reached enormous heights, then precipitously collapsed.
Charles Mackay, in The Madness of Crowds, recounts the anecdote of a sailor who mistook a particularly valuable bulb for an onion and ate it. According to Mackay, the sailor was found “eating a breakfast whose cost might have regaled a whole ship’s crew for a twelvemonth.”
Steam Spiegel 
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