Vienna gave its name to the 1873 stock-market crash commonly called the Vienna Stock Exchange crash.
On 9 May 1873, panic erupted on the Vienna Stock Exchange after a period of rapid speculation and rising asset prices. The collapse damaged banks and investors in Austria-Hungary and helped expose weaknesses in a wider European financial boom. The shock soon spread internationally.
The United States experienced its own severe panic later in 1873, after the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September. Railways had expanded rapidly, often with heavy borrowing, and declining confidence made refinancing difficult. The resulting downturn is frequently called the Long Depression.
The 1873 crisis is sometimes labeled the “Panic of 1873” rather than the “Vienna crash,” especially in American history. Vienna is the specific city associated with the first dramatic stock-exchange collapse in the sequence, while the later U.S. panic became a major chapter of the same global downturn.