This is damn interesting. Headphones recommend it. By the summer of 1944, the Mount Washington Hotel

had been mothballed for two years. Nestled deep in the Appalachian Mountains, the sprawling resort was

once a favorite getaway for wealthy New Englanders.

But in the wake of the Great Depression and the Second War to End All Wars, the end appeared nigh for this silent relic of America's Gilded Age.

Then the U.S. Treasury Department offered its owners a staggering $300,000 if they would host

a conference to start in less than a month.

An army of hotel workers and hastily recruited townspeople got to work.

On the 1st of July, 730 delegates from 44 countries checked in and proceeded to conduct

one of the most influential economic conferences of all time, carving into history the name

of the Sylvan Outpost where it was held, Bretton Woods.

Known officially as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, the Bretton Woods

talks focus primarily on foreign exchange

rates and other tedious minutia of monetary policy.

With the world engulfed in war, few in those days were giving much thought to topics as

arcane as these, but some people were giving it quite a lot of thought.

One was U.S. Treasury Advisor Harry Dexter White, who had been toiling in relative obscurity

to forge an exchange rate policy that all nations on earth would agree to.

Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.

Now, the technocrat from Humble Roots was about to pull it off, earning recognition

and his first official government title,

Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Treasury. Harry White would soon experience recognition of another

sort, with his name splashed across newspaper headlines, but for reasons having nothing to do with

...