Silver Speculators.

One of the most spectacular and unsuccessful financial schemes of the early 1980s was the attempt of brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt to corner the world market for silver. Although the brothers failed to corner the silver market, they did manage to wreak havoc in the international market for precious metals and to lose much of one of the largest fortunes in the world.

Arizona Slim.

Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt were born to one of the wealthiest families in America. Their father, Haroldson Lafayette (known as H. L. or Arizona Slim) Hunt, accumulated a fortune in the Texas oil business during the 1920s and 1930s and then invested his oil profits into a range of enterprises that made his family one of the richest families in America. When H. L. Hunt died in 1974, he left...