Black Fridays of the World

14th Feb, 2007

After watching Black Friday movie, I tried wiking the term, and I was amazed to find a lot of Black Fridays across the globe. Hope you find it interesting too.

Black Friday may refer to the following historical events:

• Black Friday (1869), the Fisk-Gould Scandal (24 Sep), a financial crisis in the United States
• Black Friday (1881), the Eyemouth Disaster (14 Oct), in which 189 Scottish fishermen lost their lives in a European windstorm
• Black Friday (1887), hanging of four people which are connected directly or indirectly with the rally of Haymarket Riot at 11 Nov
• Black Friday (1889), the Johnstown Flood (31 May), a flood that killed over 2,200 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
• Black Friday (1910), a campaign outside the British House of Commons (18 Nov) of the Women's Social and Political Union the Conciliation Bill failed
• Black Friday (1919), the Battle of George Square (31 Jan), a riot stemming from industrial unrest in Glasgow, Scotland
• Black Friday (1921), the announcement of British transport union leaders (15 Apr) not to call for strike action against wage reductions for miners
• Black Friday (1929), the notorious stock-market crash that occurred in late October 1929
• Black Friday (1939), a day of devastating fires in Australia (13 Jan)
• Black Friday (1944), a disastrous attack by the Canadian Black Watch (13 Oct) near Woensdrecht during The Battle of the Scheldt
• Black Friday (1945), an air battle over Sunnfjord (9 Feb), the largest air battle over Norway
• Black Friday (1945), Hollywood Black Friday (5 Oct), a riot at the Warner Bros. studios stemming from a Confederation of Studio Unions (CSU) strike leading to the eventual breakup of the CSU
• Black Friday (1959), the cancellation of the CF-105 Avro Arrow project (20 Feb) by Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker leading to the lay off of 30,000 workers
• Black Friday (1978), a massacre of protesters in Iran (8 Sep)
• Black Friday (1982), the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War
• Black Friday (1987), (31 Jul), the day an hour-long F4 category tornado ran through the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Black Friday (1993), bomb blasts in Bombay (now Mumbai), India
• Black Friday (2004), a crackdown in Maldives, Malé (13 Aug) on a peaceful protesters

Black Friday may also refer to:

• Any Friday which falls on the 13th of a month
• Good Friday or God Friday, the Friday preceding Easter
• Black Friday (shopping), the day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States, the first shopping day of the Christmas season and one of the busiest shopping days of the year
• The last Friday before Christmas in the United Kingdom, a day when widespread anti-social behavior due to public alcohol consumption is expected to occur, and police are given additional powers to combat it citation needed
• Black Friday (1940 film), a science-fiction/horror film starring Boris Karloff, Stanley Ridges, and Bela Lugosi
• Black Friday (2005 film), a Hindi film on the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, directed by Anurag Kashyap
• "Black Friday", a song by Grinspoon
• "Black Friday", a song by Steely Dan from Katy Lied
• "Black Friday", a song by Megadeth
• "Black Friday Rule", a title of a song by Flogging Molly
• "Black Friday", the nickname for game 3 of the 1977 NLCS baseball championships. Philadelphia Phillies fans gave the nickname because the Phillies blew an early lead against the Los Angeles Dodgers and a controversial call was made during the game
• "Black Friday", the title of a poem written by Dennis Rader, the BTK killer

To view the updated list of Black Fridays .. click here

As a matter of fact, when search for black days, you would get a list for black monday, black tuesday .... black sunday. But black friday has the most numerous list of all the 7 days of the week.

Black Friday - Mumbai bomb blast revelations

14th Feb, 2007

Yesterday night I had been to watch BLACK FRIDAY, a hindi movie on Bombay Blasts of 12th March, 1993. The director Anurag Kashyap has done a commendable job in presenting an unbiased description of all the devastating incidents that occured during that period. I am compelled to rate this film over others like Farenheit 9/11, Oscar winning Crash, Munich, etc.


The movie tries to touch all the aspects of the psyche of people involved in the whole incident.
1. The conspirators and their motives
2. The people who executed the plan and their families
3. The police
4. The role of Pakistani Intelligence Agency ISI and Rashtriya Swayamsevak sangh RSS
5. The innocent people who suffered due to the investigation

However, the film doesnt highlight the sufferings of the victims whose realtives were killed/injured in the blasts. It also did not give much footage to the role of media and I appreciate that. This was about the film. Watch the film to know the facts.

The film was so gripping that the audience was spellbound and astonished by the details of the whole chapter. I was shocked and ashamed of my ignorance of this whole incident. You ask me why? Here is my set of reasons: I have been born and brought up in Mumbai and I have always lived in and around mumbai through the past quarter century. I was in Mumbai when the riots happened. I was in Mumbai when the blasts shocked the city.... Still, I knew nothing about the whole incident, apart from the headlines that were served to me in my bed with the morning tea. My age must be 11 years then. I am thankful to the makers of this film and author S. Hussain Zaidi for exposing this unknown truth to the youth of India. I would even like to see an inclusion of these incidents in history textbooks of 8th grade. This film was completed in 2005, however due to a stay order by court this film was not released till 2007. The final verdict of the bomb blast case paved the way for the relaese of this film.

Another shameful aspect of the incident was the time-delay and inefficiency of Indian government to pass judgement over the whole case. It took 13 years to entangle a very simple case. If such facts were known within 6 months of the blast, how could the Indian judiciary explain such a long delay? At the end of the movie there were a few statements:

Bombay bomb blast was the longest criminal case in Indian judiciary
Out of 122 convicted, 100 were found guilty
Tiger Memon, Dawood Ibrahim and 26 others are still absconding

How could Indian government be negligent of this issue. How could a damned criminal like Tiger Memon still roam free somewhere in Pakistan or Dubai. I consider this as a utter failure of Indian foreign relations and diplomacy. Is Dawood Ibrahim more powerful than Indian democracy. If we link it to the Saddam-US analogy, we can consider that Dawood is more powerful and influential than Saddam and even US because India is a bigger democracy than US.

More info on the movie at IMDB