Black Tuesday Wipes Out Wall Street

On October 29, 1929, panicked investors dumped roughly 16.4 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the worst single day of a crash that had already battered prices the previous Thursday and Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 30.57 points, or 11.73 percent, capping a two-day loss of nearly 23 percent. Ticker tape ran so far behind the actual trades that brokers on the floor did not know real prices until hours after the closing bell, with some tickers still clattering out old quotes around 7:45 p.m. Financiers including William C. Durant and members of the Rockefeller family tried buying stock in plain view of the floor to project confidence, the same move that had briefly steadied things five days earlier, but this time nobody bought the act. By the next morning the Times summed up the carnage in one headline, and New York, then the country, tipped into the Great Depression.