When you look at 1929, a number of historically significant events occurred. The first to come to mind is the October 29th crash of the stock market leading to the Great Depression. Other events include Herbert Hoover being inaugurated as President with Charles Curtis as Vice President, the first Native American to serve in that position. The White House sustained the most severe fire since 1814. Other events throughout the year include the US and Canada agreeing to preserve Niagara Falls, the US Congress establishing the Grand Teton National Park, the first Academy Awards being held and lasting 15 minutes, the opening of the Museum of Modern Art, the ship the Queen Mary being ordered by Cunard Line, and the first US nudist organization, The American League for Physical Culture, being formed in New York City. There are of course a host of other events that occurred worldwide. The reason we're talking about 1929 is because that is the year that Edward J. Wolgemuth and others founded the Fire, Casualty and Surety Bulletins, to create a service dedicated to the discussion of insurance coverage. Their abiding interest in the insurance industry and desire to provide accurate and professional analysis and advice led to the development and growth of the Fire, Casualty and Surety Bulletins, even during the difficult times of the depression.

It's now 95 years later, the internet has been invented and is part of our daily lives, and FC&S, now an online product, is happy to continue to provide expert coverage analysis to subscribers. Many of you may remember the large black binders that held the FC&S content and were updated monthly, with directions for adding and removing pages. Some may remember when we had a continuing education program, where each monthly supplement had a series of 25 questions that could be answered and sent to the editors for grading for CE credit. Over the next few months, we'll feature some of our earlier content. We know some of you have fond memories of your early days in the industry updating the binders, and some of you out there cut your teeth on FC&S content. We appreciate what Chip Merlin of Merlin Law Group has shared about us on their website. We located two articles where he gives us honorable mention: First, his 2017 article, "Few Judges and Insurance Regulators Worked in Property Claims: Understanding New Depreciation Rulings'", and again in 2021 in his article: "Can You Get Paid More on Your Insurance Claim When Prices Rise After a Loss". We'd love to hear your memories/stories about us; so please send them my way: [email protected].

But that's not all The National Underwriter/FC&S has accomplished. Over the years, the editors have spoken at any number of conferences, and written multiple coverage guides explaining the standard ISO coverages. You have only to go to nationalunderwriter.com to see the various coverage guides that are still being produced, from the Commercial Auto Coverage Guide to the Homeowners Coverage Guide and more. FC&S has been referenced in more than one court case discussing interpretation of insurance coverage. From the beginning we've had an "Ask the Experts" feature, where insurance professionals may send a coverage question to our coverage experts, who will answer the question within a few days. Recently, we received industry recognition from The CPCU Society for our PC360 article titled, "7 Commercial insurance exposures from the Baltimore Bridge Collapse", and along with guest speaker marine specialist and CUO Steven Weiss of Incarnation Specialty Underwriters, LLC, conducted a free webinar for the Society on "Baltimore's Key Bridge: Insurance Impact". Over 900 people attended.