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- Black Friday was the nickname given by the 1st Battalion The Black Watch of Canada to the date 13 October 1944. On that day, during World War II's Battle of the Scheldt in The Netherlands, the regiment attacked German positions on a raised railway embankment near the village of Hoogerheide after advancing across 1,200 yards of open beet fields.
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Sep 30, 2005 · A book has been written about the air raid and is called Black Friday February 9th 1945. There is also another book about the people that lost their lives and families, there were photos of Cecil...
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- HISTORY Vault: America the Story of Us
The retail bonanza known as Black Friday is now an integral part of many Thanksgiving celebrations, but this holiday tradition has darker roots than you might imagine.
The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
The most commonly repeated story behind the Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Though it’s true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is the officially sanctioned—but inaccurate—story behind the tradition.
How Department Stores Liberated Victorian-Era Women
In recent years, another myth has surfaced that gives a particularly ugly twist to the tradition, claiming that back in the 1800s Southern plantation owners could buy enslaved workers at a discount on the day after Thanksgiving. Though this version of Black Friday’s roots has understandably led some to call for a boycott of the retail holiday, it has no basis in fact.
The real history behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only were Philly cops not able to take the day off, but they had to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores and made off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.
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Deaths. 71. Structures destroyed. 650. Ignition. Cause. Heat wave. Careless burning. The Black Friday bushfires of 13 January 1939, in Victoria, Australia, were part of the devastating 1938–1939 bushfire season in Australia, which saw bushfires burning for the whole summer, and ash falling as far away as New Zealand.
Black Friday was the nickname given by the 1st Battalion The Black Watch of Canada to the date 13 October 1944. On that day, during World War II's Battle of the Scheldt in The Netherlands, the regiment attacked German positions on a raised railway embankment near the village of Hoogerheide after advancing across 1,200 yards of open beet fields.
- 13 October 1944
- German Victory
- Hoogerheide, Netherlands
Black Friday was the nickname given by 1st Battalion The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada to the date 13 October 1944. On that day, during World War II 's Battle of the Scheldt in The Netherlands near Hoogerheide , the regiment attacked German positions on a raised railway embankment across 1,200 yards of open beet fields and ...
September 24, 1939 (Sunday) The Luftwaffe bombed Warsaw for the first time, reducing entire streets to rubble and causing widespread fires. The British government considered the bombing a breach of the pledge Germany made at the start of the war to refrain from indiscriminate attacks.
June 3, 1942 (Wednesday) The Battle of Midway began. The Japanese sought to deliver another crushing blow to the U.S. Navy to ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific, but American codebreakers had determined the time and place of the Japanese attack in advance, enabling the U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush.
