When did the Great Depression begin?

The Great Depression, the most severe economic downturn in modern history, is generally dated to the Wall Street Crash of late October 1929, when US stock prices collapsed on days remembered as Black Thursday and Black Tuesday. The crisis spread worldwide, causing mass unemployment, bank failures and a collapse in trade and industrial output that lasted through much of the 1930s. In the United States, unemployment reached around 25 percent at its peak. Recovery was slow and uneven, aided by government programmes such as the New Deal, and in many countries the economy only fully rebounded with the industrial demands of the Second World War.