The 1873 financial crisis that began with a Vienna stock-market crash and spread across Europe and the United States was the Panic of 1873.
A speculative boom in railways and real estate had encouraged heavy borrowing and rapid investment. In May 1873, the Vienna stock exchange crashed, helping destroy confidence in financial institutions and overextended companies.
The crisis reached the United States after the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company in September. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, and a long period of economic weakness followed. Historians debate how best to define its duration and geographic impact.
The panic is sometimes called the Long Depression because economic stagnation persisted for years in several countries. It was not the same event as the Panic of 1893, another major American financial crisis two decades later.