Showing posts with the label Disaster

The Great Yarmouth Suspension Bridge Collapse of 1845

Aug 9, 2023

The year was 1845 and the Cooke's Royal Circus was in town. All of Great Yarmouth was brimming with excitement. The Cooke’s Royal Circus...

Wanggongchang Explosion: A 17th Century Disaster That Nearly Destroyed Beijing

Aug 8, 2023

Gunpowder, a volatile and explosive substance composed of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, has played a significant role in shaping history....

Marching Soldiers And Collapsing Bridges

Apr 19, 2023

All suspension bridges are prone to vibration and swaying caused by moving traffic and wind. These vibration are not a problem as long as th...

The Knox Mine Disaster

Oct 19, 2022

On January 22, 1959, miners at the River Slope Mine of the Knox Coal Company in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania, were digging under the Susqu...

Wilhelm Gustloff: The Deadliest Ship Disaster You Never Heard Of

Aug 22, 2022

The sinking of the British ocean liner Titanic in 1912, with over 1,500 fatalities, is probably the most famous shipwreck of all time, but n...

Drowning in Sewage: The Sinking of Princess Alice

Aug 10, 2022

The sinking of SS Princes Alice , a British paddle steamer, on the River Thames on 3 September 1878, that resulted in the loss of more than ...

The Lake Peigneur Drilling Disaster

Apr 4, 2022

Near the northern tip of Vermilion Bay in the US state of Louisiana, lies a small saltwater lake called Peigneur. Although pretty modest by ...

The Pantai Remis Landslide

Sep 9, 2021

Tin mining is one of the oldest industries in Malaysia, having been mined for centuries along the river banks. These mines were small and th...

Women And Children Last: The Infamous Sinking of La Bourgogne

May 3, 2021

The sinking of the French ocean liner SS La Bourgogne on the morning of 4 July 1898 was one of the most disgraceful of disasters in mariti...

How a Failed Dam Legalized Marrying The Dead

Mar 12, 2021

Sitting low among the hills, just north of the city of Frejus, in southern France, not far from the French Riviera coast, are the broken rem...

The Erfurt Latrine Disaster

Sep 1, 2020

Deaths are always unfortunate and even more so if they occur as a result of an accident. But sometimes there are incidents that have particu...

The Ruins of Gleno Dam

Aug 27, 2020

In a small valley, among the mountains of Lombardy, in northern Italy, stands a dam, or rather, half a dam. Built on the Gleno Creek, the Gl...

The Vajont Dam Disaster

Jul 7, 2020

In the valley of the Vajont River, about a hundred kilometers north of Venice, stands an old, disused dam. The vast wall of white, wedged hi...

The Goiânia Radiological Accident

Oct 24, 2019

A radiation therapy unit in a hospital. Photo credit: Thomas Hecker/Shutterstock.com Radioactive isotopes have a very niche use in medicin...

Kyshtym: The Nuclear Disaster That Was Kept Secret For 30 Years

Jun 4, 2019

Thirty years before the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded, in what became one of the most devastating nuclear accidents in history, ther...

Berezniki: The Russian City Swallowed By Sinkholes

May 3, 2019

The city of Berezniki, in Russia’s Ural mountains, is slowly sinking into the earth. The city of more than 150,000 individuals was built dir...

RMS Tayleur: The Other Titanic

Jan 31, 2019

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the best remembered maritime disasters in history. A grand luxury ship touted as the safest vessel aflo...

China’s Misguided War Against Sparrows

Jan 8, 2019

These panel of images from the late 1950s China, depicting young boys hunting sparrows for sport, were taken from a poster aimed at school ...

The Photographers Who Braved Mount St. Helens

Jan 3, 2019

When Mount St. Helens erupted in the morning of May 18, 1980, a freelance photographer named Robert Landsberg was within four miles of the s...

Nova Scotia’s Christmas Gift to Boston

Dec 18, 2018

For nearly half a century, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia has been sending a gift to the people of Boston in the form of a Christmas t...