October 6 in business history: a safe on a moving train, a 400-point band, and an app that kept only photos

Three 6 Octobers, and on each one a business found the distance between what it said it was managing and what it was actually managing: a railroad that insured the safe, a central bank that held an interest rate inside a fifty-point band, and two founders whose app had five features when their users wanted one.

On the evening of 6 October 1866, John and Simeon Reno boarded an Ohio & Mississippi Railroad train as it left Seymour, Indiana, broke into the express car, restrained the guard and cracked open a safe. One account puts the haul at about $13,000; another at close to $16,000 12. A second, larger safe went off the side of the moving train and was left where it landed.

Robbing a moving train was the new part. Earlier train robberies had been burglaries of cars standing in depots and freight yards, and the method spread west along the newly built lines 1. The contents of the safe were insured by the Adams Express Company, and Adams Express hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to run the gang down 23.

The industry's answer came afterwards: heavier safes under armed guard, and on the Union Pacific special boxcars carrying guards and their horses, so a robbery attempt could become a chase. By the late 19th century train robbery had become a harder and more dangerous trade 1.

Decision mirror: Verisk CargoNet counted 2,646 confirmed cargo thefts across the United States and Canada in 2025, 18 per cent more than in 2024, and put the losses at nearly $725 million, up 60 per cent, an average of $273,990 a theft 4. The goods still travel through somebody else's system, and the bill still arrives at whoever agreed to carry the obligation.

Paul Volcker had been chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for two months when he called an unannounced meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee for Saturday 6 October 1979 and announced the result that evening at a rare press conference 5.

Three actions, as the Board's own release records them: the discount rate raised a full point, from 11 to 12 per cent, unanimously; an 8 per cent marginal reserve requirement on increases in "managed liabilities", the large certificates of deposit, federal funds bought from non-banks and Eurodollar borrowings that funded rapid credit growth; and a change in how policy was run, weighting the supply of bank reserves above short-term movements in the federal funds rate 6.

That third part was the break. The band the committee would let the funds rate move in went from 50 basis points, 11.25 to 11.75 per cent, to 400 basis points, 11.5 to 15.5 per cent. Volcker told the reporters the daily rate was "apt to fluctuate over a wider range than had been the practice in recent years" 7. The funds rate ended 1979 near 14 per cent and averaged above 19 per cent in June 1981; inflation, running at 14.6 per cent in the year to April 1980, fell below 4 per cent; unemployment peaked near 11 per cent at the end of 1982 7. Farmers picketed the Federal Reserve building, and car dealers sent coffins holding the keys of unsold cars 5.

Decision mirror: On 16 September 2026 the committee raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75 to 4 per cent on a 12–0 vote and said "Inflation remains elevated"; its September projections put PCE inflation at 3.7 per cent for 2026 against a 2 per cent goal 89. The Fed is tightening into above-target inflation again, at a level in the threes rather than the low teens Volcker inherited.

Instagram went live in Apple's App Store on 6 October 2010. Kevin Systrom, who had worked at Google, built Burbn, a check-in app in the style of Foursquare with plans, points and photographs; he brought in Mike Krieger, and the two cut the product back to photographs, comments and likes, an iPhone-only app with square images sized to the phone screen 10.

The early money was $250,000 from Baseline Ventures' Steve Anderson and a matching $250,000 from Andreessen Horowitz 11. Twenty-five thousand people downloaded the app on the first day, and a million within three months 10. On 9 April 2012, eighteen months after the launch, Facebook agreed to buy Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and stock; it had some 30 million users 12.

Decision mirror: Meta's second-quarter 2026 report counts 3.60 billion people using at least one of its apps each day and revenue of $60.80 billion, up 28 per cent 13; on the earnings call Mark Zuckerberg put Instagram at 2 billion daily active users 14.