Sunday · November 15, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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The Dow sheds 733 points; only Black Monday fell faster

A 7.87 percent close puts the 2008 financial crisis in the same sentence as 1987.

A month after Lehman Brothers collapsed, Wall Street still had no floor. On October 15, 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 733.08 points, a 7.87 percent drop that ranked as the second-worst single-day percentage decline in the index's history, trailing only the 22.6 percent collapse of Black Monday in 1987. Banks were failing, credit markets had frozen, and the federal bailout passed weeks earlier had not stopped the bleeding…

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More from October 15
1954

Hazel comes ashore in the Carolinas; by nightfall it is drowning Toronto

A Category 4 landfall near Calabash and a flash flood on the Humber River happen hundreds of miles apart, on the same day.
1781

Graham's riders break the Tory line at Raft Swamp; darkness ends North Carolina's last battle

Four days before Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, a swamp causeway fight scatters the last organized Loyalist force in the state.
1997

A Titan IVB rises from Cape Canaveral, carrying Cassini toward Saturn

The seven-year voyage begins with 72 pounds of plutonium and a DVD of 616,400 signatures tucked aboard.
19911776 Club
The Fly's Eye detector catches a flash of ultraviolet light that shouldn't be possible under the physics of the day.
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More from Modern America
1997

Atlantis lifts off at night, headed for a wounded Russian station

Commander James Wetherbee's crew carries a French astronaut, David Wolf as a replacement for Michael Foale, and a repair spacewalk.
1993

By dawn, a relief convoy finally reaches the surrounded Americans in Mogadishu

Seventeen hours after the first Black Hawk fell, Pakistani and Malaysian armor opens a corridor out of the city.
2008

MESSENGER finds a 716-kilometer scar on Mercury's southern hemisphere

The second of three planned flybys doubles as a gravity-assist maneuver and a discovery run.
2001

American bombs fall on Afghanistan; Bush says "time is running out"

Air strikes hit Taliban defenses and al-Qaeda camps as U.S. special forces move in to back the Northern Alliance.
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