The 1992 European currency crisis was called Black Wednesday.
On 16 September 1992, the United Kingdom was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after intense pressure from currency speculators. The government raised interest rates and spent billions of pounds trying to keep sterling within its permitted band, but those measures failed.
The day became known as Black Wednesday in Britain because the policy effort ended in a costly defeat. In political debate, supporters later used the phrase White Wednesday for the economic recovery that followed. Black Wednesday was a currency crisis rather than a conventional stock-market crash, but it produced major losses and changed public debate about fixed exchange rates and European monetary integration.