Passage: On September 15, 2008, a wider financial crisis became evident when Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy along with the economic effect of record high oil prices which reached almost $150 per Barrel of oil equivalent two months earlier. When opening that morning, it immediately lost 300 points and overall the DJIA lost more than 500 points for only the sixth time in history, returning to its mid-July lows below the 11,000 level. A series of "bailout" packages, including the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, proposed and implemented by the Federal Reserve System and United States Department of the Treasury, as well as Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-sponsored bank mergers, did not prevent further losses. After nearly six months of extreme volatility during which the Dow experienced its largest one-day point loss, largest daily point gain, and largest intra-day range (more than 1,000 points), the index closed at a new twelve-year low of 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009 (after an intra-day low of 6,469.95 during the March 6 session), its lowest close since April 1997, and had lost 20% of its value in only six weeks.
What was the lowest close of the Dow since April 1997?