Vienna hosted the stock-exchange crash known as Black Friday on May 9, 1873.
The Vienna Stock Exchange collapsed after a speculative boom in shares and property. Confidence broke suddenly, and many companies failed. The panic spread through financial connections to Germany and the United States, helping trigger the wider Panic of 1873.
In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 intensified the crisis. Railroads had expanded rapidly using borrowed money, and falling investment values made debt burdens harder to service. The resulting depression affected industrial production, employment, and international trade.
The name Black Friday is used for several unrelated events, including the 1869 U.S. gold panic and the modern shopping day after Thanksgiving. In the context of the Panic of 1873, it refers specifically to the Vienna market collapse on May 9.