"Historical bugs” section. Black Monday

October 19, 1987, Monday. Exactly on this day happened something that involved stock markets of USA, Australia, Canada, Hong-Kong and several other countries. 29 years ago happened the biggest fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in its history — 22.6%. This event became known as Black Monday.

The reason - the “rise of the machines”. A software bug of the program trading caused the electronic assistants to get rid of the securities losing their value instead of correcting the situation at the moment of the market crush. It affected the programs of other players and a chain reaction started. That’s how the main actors of the financial market became computers, not people.

Black Monday is another fact proving that a software bug can lead to extremely bad consequences. Fortunately, now the programmers have great helpers - static code analyzers.

We recommend reading articles on the topic of bugs and their consequences:

«Toyota: 81 514 issues in the code»
http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0439/

«Killer Bug. Therac-25: Quick-and-Dirty»
http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0438/

«A space error: 370.000.000 $ for an integer overflow»
http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0426/