Things That Go Boom, Go Bust
Today is the anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash in 1929 that signaled the beginning of the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world. Three million shares were sold in the first half-hour. Stock prices fell so fast that by the end of the day there were shares in many companies that no one would buy at any price. The stocks had lost their entire value.
…the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history…
The front page story in the New York Times on this day read, “Wall Street was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis… Men and women crowded the brokerage offices, even those who have been long since wiped out, and followed the figures on the tape. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones.”
It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. The stock market lost $30 billion, more than a third of its value, in the next two weeks.
From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
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