The official name of the 1907 U.S. financial crisis was the Panic of 1907.
The panic began after a failed attempt to corner the shares of United Copper Company. When the scheme collapsed, depositors withdrew money from banks and trust companies connected to the speculators. The crisis intensified when the Knickerbocker Trust Company, then New York’s third-largest trust, suspended operations in October 1907.
J. P. Morgan organized emergency lending and persuaded banks to provide liquidity. His intervention helped prevent a broader collapse, but the episode exposed weaknesses in the U.S. banking system, which lacked a central bank capable of acting quickly as a lender of last resort.
The panic helped build political support for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the creation of the Federal Reserve System. It is sometimes called the Knickerbocker Panic because of the trust company’s prominent failure, but “Panic of 1907” is the standard historical name.