May 9 in History

The Long Depression began in 1873, when a stock market crash in Vienna set off a wave of financial panics across Europe and North America. It was not a continuous collapse so much as a prolonged period of falling prices, weak profits and recurring slumps that lasted, depending on the historian, until the mid-1890s. The label has been debated for a long time, since output and trade in many countries kept growing. Even so, the era reshaped economic policy, ended the confident free-trade mood of the mid-century, and helped drive the rise of both protectionism and organized labor.

In May 1926, American naval officer Richard E. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown over the North Pole, an achievement that would have made them the first people to reach it by air. Their claim made Byrd a national hero, yet it has been disputed ever since, and the question of whether they actually reached the pole remains one of the lingering controversies of polar exploration.