The housing bubble bursting in 2008, was the most recent economic bubble which burst, and had global economic effects on finance. But historically there were many other economic bubbles, for example the rise of digital technology, especially the internet and internet domains was quite a boom, for awhile, as evidenced in the following graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/NASDAQ_IXIC_-_dot-com...
Some other techno influenced bubbles historically, have been the railway expansion, of course, Detroit and the automotive industry, but some very peculiar ones as well, such as the Tulip mania of the Dutch market. For a fun quiz, follow the link below, on whether you can name 14 historic bubbles: