Vienna hosted the stock exchange at the center of the 1873 panic that helped begin the Long Depression.
The Vienna Stock Exchange crash began on May 9, 1873, a day remembered as Black Friday in Austria. Speculative investment had surged during a boom in railway and property companies, and confidence collapsed when investors began selling shares rapidly.
The panic spread through financial connections to Germany, the United States, and other economies. In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a severe financial crisis and the temporary closure of the New York Stock Exchange.
Historians debate the exact boundaries and causes of the Long Depression, but the 1873 panic is widely treated as its starting point. It should not be confused with the 1929 crash, which preceded the Great Depression.