One banker's railroad bet collapsed and triggered a five-year depression

In September 1873, the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company, which had overextended itself financing the Northern Pacific Railroad, suddenly failed. The shock closed the New York Stock Exchange for ten days and set off bank runs, factory closures and farm foreclosures across the US and Europe. The resulting slump, called the Great Depression until the 1930s claimed that name instead, dragged on for more than five years.

— Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters — 2012
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