What happened
After a long speculative boom, stock prices on the New York market collapsed in a series of panic sell-offs that destroyed paper wealth and destabilized confidence in the financial system.
Why it matters
The crash did not by itself create every dimension of the Depression, but it remains the clearest symbolic and financial starting point for the wider collapse that followed. It belongs here because it marks the opening shock of the interwar economic crisis.
Notes
Use this as the opening economic anchor rather than trying to treat the entire Depression as a single event.