Black Monday

Black Monday is a name unique to Mondays on which dire events occurred. Originally the term referred to select Easter Mondays, it later was applied to any notorious Monday.

Quotes

• LAUNCELOT An they have conspired together, I will not say you

  shall see a masque; but if you do, then it was not

  for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on

  Black-Monday last at six o'clock i' the morning,

  falling out that year on Ash-Wednesday was four

  year, in the afternoon.

  • Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (1598)

• But a false brother gave notice of the citizens intentions to the enemy, then lurking in the neighbouring mountains, who marching down privately, laid an ambush in Cullen's-wood, who fell on the citizens unprepared and fatigued with the laborious diversion, and slew upwards of five hundred of them. This disaster happened in the year 1209, and ever since hath been called black-monday.
  • Walter Harris, Robert Ware, The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin (1766)

• Black Monday – Easter Monday, 1360, when the cold was so intense, that the English troops before Paris, under Edward III, suffered severely. The expression must have been subsequently employed in a somewhat vague sense, and among other uses, by schoolboys, as it was an usual day for returning from the holidays.
  • John Brand, Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (1777)

• The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit...people understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less...coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.
  • Nigel Lawson, Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (13 October, 1988).

• Just as the stock market crash of October 28, 1929, has forever come to be remembered as "Black Tuesday," so October 19, 1987, has come to be known as "Black Monday." It was on this day that the stock market again crashed, precipitating one of the first financial crises of the modern globalized era, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 508 points, or 22.6% of its value.
  • Library of Congress, Business Reference Services (April, 2008)