South Sea Bubble Trivia Questions

Shares soared from about £100 in early 1720 to over £1,000 by summer, then crashed to under £150 by year's end—a staggering rise and fall.

Newton initially profited and then reinvested heavily, losing around £20,000 (millions today). He famously remarked he could 'calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.'

It was granted a monopoly to trade with South America and the Pacific islands, not the East Indies—that was the East India Company's domain.

The company had no real mines; it was built on speculative hype and a monopoly to trade with Spanish colonies, which never materialized.

The Dutch Tulip Mania of the 1630s predates it, though some debate exists. The South Sea Bubble is among the earliest, but not the absolute first.

In 1711, the company was created to consolidate and manage government debt in exchange for its trade monopoly—a financial engineering scheme that fueled the bubble.

Some directors had assets confiscated, and a few were imprisoned briefly, but most escaped severe punishment due to political connections and legal loopholes.

The Bubble Act forbade unauthorized joint-stock companies, but it was pushed through by South Sea directors to suppress rival schemes, not to regulate themselves.