The Great Depression of the 1930s is conventionally dated from a specific Wall Street trading day in October 1929. Which day?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 12% on Black Tuesday — the largest single-day percentage loss until October 1987. The crash actually began the previous Thursday (Black Thursday, 24 October, also valid as a starting marker), continued through Black Monday (28 October, –13%), and culminated on Black Tuesday. By mid-November the Dow had lost about 40% from its September 1929 peak. It would lose another 60% over the following three years, bottoming at 41 in summer 1932. The 1987 Black Monday was a different crash entirely. 1869's Black Friday was Jay Gould's gold-cornering scheme.
Read the full facts →The Great Depression was the most severe and prolonged economic collapse of the 20th century, beginning with the United States stock market crash of October 1929 and continuing through most of the 1930s. It produced approximately 25% unemployment in the United States at its 1933 peak, comparable collapses across the industrialized world, and the political conditions that contributed to the rise of European fascism and the Second World War.
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