Stock brokers once spent $300 million to make trades just 5 milliseconds faster!

The speed of modern day technology is impressive. You can email someone across the world, and they will receive the message in seconds. The same goes for text messages and phone calls. It wasn't quite fast enough for investment bankers and traders, though.

In 2011, Hiberian Atlantic laid an undersea fiber optic cable from New York to London. This allowed brokers to make trades 5 milliseconds faster than other traders. This is a huge advantage, because the financial industry is now largely automated and 5 milliseconds is a big difference to a computer.

(Source)