Prices on the New York Stock Exchange keep rising -- RCA's shares go from $100 to $400 in 1928, for example -- until, on Oct. 29, 1929, they all fall fast. By 1932, Wall Street stocks are worth only 11 percent of what they had been three years earlier. Many investors are ruined. Salaries, too, plummet. Unemployment skyrockets. The country and much of the world fall into deep economic depression.

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