Ninety-six years ago today, on October 29, 1929 (September 27, 1929), the Great World Economic Crisis broke out. A sign erected on the car read: "You can buy this car for $100. Everything is lost in the stock market, and cash is urgently needed." The Wall Street crash of October 1929 was perhaps the greatest disaster the financial world has ever suffered. In the 18 months leading up to the fatal day, the bull market in Wall Street's stock market seemed unshakable, with the price of some major industrial stocks more than doubling as speculators flocked to the stock market in search of quick, massive profits. For a period of time, as many as 500,000 shares were traded every day. As investors poured money into the stock market, some funds also rushed out of less profitable investments and into the stock market. European money flooded into the United States, and banks lent a total of about 80 billion yuan to securities traders to trade on the New York stock market. Shortly after Herbert Hoover was elected president, he tried to control the stock market by refusing to lend to banks that financed speculation, but the stock price continued to soar, reaching an all-time high on September 3, 1929. More than 8 million shares were traded that day. That same month, stock market prices began to fall for the first time, but experts and government statements assured the public that there was nothing to be surprised about. But they were dead wrong. On October 24, the stock market bottomed out. Panic gripped Wall Street as the stock market crashed at an average rate of 18 points a day. As speculators rushed to sell their stocks before they fell even lower, stock tickers could no longer keep up with the rapid decline in the stock market. On October 24 alone, 12 million transactions took place, and a coalition of banks moved quickly to control the situation, but this was only a temporary delay. Stock prices soon resumed their relentless decline, falling by an average of 40 percentage points by October 29. As the prices of some major stocks shrank by more than two-thirds, $26 billion was wiped out in the first month of the Great Crash. Thousands of Americans watched their life savings vanish in a matter of days. But this was only the first horrific blow of the Great Depression. The United States has experienced stock market panics and financial depressions in the past, but none have had such a profound impact on the lives of ordinary Americans as this one, because the Great Depression that followed will make most people difficult. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran the headline "Wall Street Crashes, Panics" and watched anxiously as the financial world moved on Wall Street. Customers of Wall Street brokerages were anxiously scanning the newspapers for the latest news of the stock market crash. Not all the people who gathered on the sidewalk in front of New York's bourse on October 24 seemed panicked