1929: In an attempt to calm panicking investors, the New York Stock Exchange announces that it will be open for trading only three hours a day this week. The investing public takes no comfort, trading an astounding 6 million shares in just 180 minutes — more than twice the level of a normal full day's trading just weeks earlier. U.S. Steel alone trades 108,700 shares, a nearly unprecedented volume for a single stock, and loses 5% to close at $183.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 5.8% to finish the day at 257.68 — down 32.4% in two months.

Barrie A. Wigmore, The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT and London, 1985), p. 22