See if this sounds familiar: a major “too big to fail” business institution does fail, and drags down with it a variety of other dependent institutions, which in turn start dragging down institutions dependent on them. European investors, meanwhile, worried over the events, pull out their funding, sending the DOW into a tailspin. This did not take play five years ago, or even fifty; it happened in the closing years of the 19th century.

On this day, May 5, in 1893, after the Reading Railroad, one of the major rail lines in the entire nation, declared bankruptcy, the industrial stock market plunged. Investors rushed to the banks to withdraw their money, which forced the banks to call in their loans early, creating what became arguable the second largest financial disaster, after the Great Depression.

The crisis magnified and grew at least partly due to the inaction of President Grover Cleveland, who believed in the invisible hand guiding the market. Cleveland, to his credit did make one move: with the tons of gold being shipped abroad to American creditors as a result of the crisis, he turned to the banker and financier to borrow $87 million in gold, so as to not deplete the U.S. treasury.