5 Facts You Did Never Knew About Black Friday

1.Black Friday traditionally happens the day after Thanksgiving - which is an official holiday celebrated in theUnited States (on the 4th Thursday in November) and Canada. It is marked by huge discounts offered by retailers and it also officially kicks off the Christmas shopping season.

2. The first recorded use of the term "Black Friday" was in September 1869 when the United States gold market experienced a crash after financiers,Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, bought up the nation's supply and the federal government was forced to dump more into the market. Many lost their lives savings in the crash and the ensuing scandal helped bring down the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.

3. The term once again came up  in the 1950s when police officers inPhiladelphia started using it to refer to the day after Thanksgiving, when traffic jams and tourists flooded into the city's shopping district before the annual Army-Navy football game held on the ensuing Saturday. The resulting chaos would often lead police officers to work long shifts to protect merchants from attempts by shoplifters to take advantage of the huge crowds by hauling off merchandise. Thus, everyone who had to work that day referred to it as a bleak time, or a Black Friday.

4. In lieu of the above, many merchants in Philadelphia didn't really like the connotations that came with "Black Friday" so they tried to coin a new term, Big Friday. It however didn't catch on and eventually retailers in the city adapted it to represent the profits that came as a result of the increase in business. Soon enough, the term spread through the US and became common nationwide by the 1980s.

5. Back home in Nigeria, the term gained prominence following the emergence of online retail stores Jumia and Kongawho introduced Black Friday sales in 2013.

Source pulse. Ng