Black Friday is the conventional starting day for the holiday shopping season.

Historically, it’s also been the best day to find great deals on the year’s hottest toys, games, and electronics.

• In the middle of the 20th century, Thanksgiving parades drew crowds in most major cities and in some of the smaller towns too. Many were sponsored by local or national retailers. Back in the day, that meant mostly department stores.
• By attaching their names to the ...

• Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of November since 1863 until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November (starting with 1941), influenced by the request of a powerful coalition of retailers.

• In 1869, two oligarchs conspired to corner the American gold market, which was at that time the basis for the U.S. dollar.
• Their plan was so complex and the plot finally unraveled on Friday, September 24, sending U.S. financial markets into a tailspin, ruin...

Black Friday wasn’t a great day for the police departments in mid-20th-century Philadelphia. By the 1960s, locals had taken to calling the chaotic day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday.”

In 1950s Philadelphia, Thanksgiving weekend was a mob scene. The A...

• The day after Thanksgiving was a natural time for shoppers to head into town and hit the department store. Most families were still together from the prior day’s feast, and few middle-class folks were required to work.
• Big-city shopping districts were anchored by d...

• Today’s retail environment is omnichannel. Shoppers are just as likely – if not more so – to buy stuff at home on their smartphones or laptops than drive to the nearest mall to seek the best deals in person.
• The decline of brick-and-mortar retail i...