The October 29, 1929, U.S. stock-market crash day was called Black Tuesday.
Black Tuesday followed Black Monday, October 28, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply. On October 29, panic selling intensified, and about 16 million shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, a record at the time. The Dow fell nearly 12 percent that day.
The crash was the most famous early event in the broader Wall Street Crash of 1929. It did not single-handedly cause the Great Depression, but it damaged confidence, reduced wealth, and exposed weaknesses in the highly leveraged economy of the late 1920s. Bank failures, falling production, deflation, and unemployment followed over the next several years.
Black Tuesday is sometimes confused with Black Thursday, October 24, the first major panic day of the crash. The two names identify different dates in the same historic market collapse.