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Black Friday, as we now know it, is the shopping day after Thanksgiving that signals the start of the end of year sales.
Retailing folklore has it that the spike in sales that retailers got from Black Friday meant that their bottom line, for the first time in the year, moved out of the red and into the black.
Outside of retailing, the term black Friday has a longer history. A search of the Guardian archive, going back to at least 1866, throws up varied examples of its use in our reporting. From stock market crashes, attacks on suffragettes, to calamitous performances by the England cricket team, there has never been, it seems, a shortage of black Fridays.
The Black Friday panic of 1866
The failure of Overend Gurney – a large discount house – sent shockwaves through the financial system in May 1866.
The Observer noted that panic spread through the city as spending ceased and a stampede began as investors withdrew their funds from banks.
England V Australia, 1899 – another ‘Black Friday’ for English cricket
A not too unfamiliar tale as England were punished by a visiting Australian side. After their batting collapse, England saw Australia amass a big score to help them win the match convincingly.
The brutal victimisation of suffragettes by police on ‘Black Friday,’ 1910
A ‘cablegram’ from Emily Pankhurst saying “protest imperative” appeared in print after ‘Black Friday’ – a day when police “brutality victimised” women marching on Parliament demanding the right to vote.
The collapse of the Triple Alliance, 1921
A promise between railway, transport unions and miners to support each other in the event of a strike was broken on ‘Black Friday’, 15 April 1921, when miners received little backing in their dispute with mine owners, who tried to reduce their wages. The epithet ‘black’ derives from a widespread feeling that the decision amounted to a breach of solidarity and a betrayal of the miners.
Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968
Alistair Cooke, writing for the Guardian, tried to capture the mood in the US following the death of the civil rights activist.
World stock markets just about survive ‘crash-ette,’ 1989
Share prices tumbled in what was seen as the first contemporary global financial crisis. The collapse of the junk bond market was blamed for causing Black Friday. Jittery market trading after the weekend led to more gloomy headlines, like Black Monday and Black Tuesday.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Black Friday isn't just about shopping – archivehttps://goo.gl/aXY9K6
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