1901 (TUESDAY)
JAPAN: Hirohito is born at the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo.
1929 (TUESDAY)
CANADA: The Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto, Ontario, Stock Exchange share prices plummet in their worst drop ever, as the New York market crash spreads quickly around the Globe. (See below.) The Calgary, Alberta, Stock Exchange closes for a few hours, but reopens when traders think the situation is only temporary. World governments quickly impose tariffs to protect their native industries from dumping, but this causes a collapse in world trade and leads to the Great Depression.
UNITED STATES: The Stock Market crashes. Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16.4 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars are lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers run hours behind because the machinery cannot handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production has already declined and unemployment has risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse are low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that can not be liquidated. Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on 18 October the fall began.
Panic sets in, and on 24 October, Black Thursday, a record 12.9 million shares are traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempt to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm breaks anew, and the market goes into free fall. Black Monday is followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely. After 29 October, stock prices have nowhere to go but up, so there is considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continue to drop as the U.S. slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks are worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 is not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it is also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America's banks have failed, and unemployment is approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of th e workforce. It will take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the U.S., to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
1935 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Winston Churchill publishes his extremely critical views on Germany in an article in Strand magazine under the title "The Truth About Hitler." German Chancellor Adolf Hitler is reported to have said, "What is to be the fate of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the writer of this article is to be made a Minister of the British Navy?"
1937 (FRIDAY)
GERMANY: The government declines the Belgian invitation to participate in the Nine-Power Conference. ("As Germany is not a party to the treaty [Nine Power] . . ." The Nine-Power Treaty is a treaty between the U.S., Belgium, the U.K., China, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal, signed on 6 February 1922, "desiring to adopt a policy designed to stabilize conditions in the Far East, to safeguard the rights and interests of China, and to promote intercourse between China and the other Powers upon the basis of equality of opportunity."
October 29th, 1939 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: A new type of German mine, set off by the noise of a ship is discovered near Porthcawl, Wales.
FRANCE: Picasso completes his masterpiece 'Femme au chapeau vert.' More....
The body of U-12's commanding officer, Kptlt Dietrich Von der Ropp, was washed ashore on the French coast near Dunkirk.
LITHUANIA: Lithuanian troops complete their re-occupation of Vilnius.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-34 sank SS Malabar in Convoy HX-5A.