Stock Market Crash

On this day in 1929, the United States experienced the most devastating stock market crash in its history as investors traded more than 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.

To learn more about Black Tuesday and the Great Depression, try the following resources:

• America in the 1930s (University of Virginia)
• Breadline (PBS)
• Dust Bowl Migrations (Library of Congress)
• FDR Cartoon Archive (Niskayuna High School)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum
• Looking Back at the Crash of '29 (New York Times)
• Periodic Table of the New Deal (Roosevelt Library)
• Posters from the WPA (Library of Congress)
• Riding the Rails (PBS)
• Social Security (Historical Thinking Matters)
• Surviving the Dust Bowl (PBS)
• The Crash of 1929 (PBS)
• The Crash of '29 (Time)
• The Great Depression (History Channel)​