In the early hours of December 16, 1811, the residents of New Madrid, a Mississippi River town once part of the Louisiana Territory, rushed from their homes as the ground rolled beneath their feet. Trees were uprooted and thrown to the ground. Huge chasms opened in the earth, ...read more
A referee’s call in a soccer match between Peru and Argentina sparks a riot on this day in 1964. More than 300 fans were killed and another 500 people were injured in the violent melee that followed at National Stadium in Lima, Peru. The match was a qualifier for the 1964 ...read more
On October 23, 1989, 23 people die in a series of explosions sparked by an ethylene leak at a factory in Pasadena, Texas. The blasts, which took place at a Phillips Petroleum Company plant, were caused by inadequate safety procedures. A polyethylene reactor at the Phillips 66 ...read more
On November 2, 1982, a truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 3,000 people, mostly Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul. The Soviet Union’s military foray into Afghanistan was disastrous by nearly every measure, but perhaps the worst single ...read more
When the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded in the early hours of April 26, 1986—precipitating the worst nuclear disaster in history—it resulted almost entirely from human factors. As the real history of that fateful event continues to be revealed, those ...read more
Fires were nothing out of the ordinary on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River in the 1960s. The city was still a manufacturing hub and the river, which empties into Lake Erie, had long been a dumping place for sewage and industrial waste. But on June 22, 1969, a spark flared from the ...read more
Overturned trains. Timber found miles away from where it had been stored. Trees felled. Fires and close calls. A letter that flew almost 100 miles. On a normal day in the Midwest in 1925, any one of these stories would have been worthy of front-page coverage. But March 18, 1925 ...read more
As the stage coach drove up to Camp Supply, its passengers must have felt relieved. They’d been caught in a storm, and the coach’s horses had lost their path in the Kansas snow. Finally, the coach arrived at Camp Supply, a military outpost in Indian Territory in what is now ...read more
Fiery hot molasses floods the streets of Boston on this day in 1919, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others. The molasses burst from a huge tank at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building in the heart of the city. The United States Industrial Alcohol ...read more
The avalanche raced down a steep hill in Aberfan, Wales, sucking everything in its path into the chaos: landscape, buildings, an entire schoolhouse. When David Evans, the owner of a local pub, heard about it from a neighbor, he ran into the street. “Everything was so quiet, so ...read more
The ninth plague of Egypt was complete darkness that lasted for three days. But in 536 A.D., much of the world went dark for a full 18 months, as a mysterious fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures ...read more
Archaeologists have discovered an elaborate, perfectly preserved shrine in the wall of a house in Pompeii, the ancient Roman city on Italy’s western coast that was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago by the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius. As many as 30,000 people are believed ...read more
It was 2004, the day after Christmas, and thousands of European and American tourists had flocked to the beaches of Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia to escape the winter chill in a tropical paradise. At 7:59 AM, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake—one of the largest ...read more
While Allied troops were fighting World War II in the Pacific, the U.S. homefront was defending Washington, D.C. from the worst flood it’d ever seen. “Spare no effort or expense to protect the Capital,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told officials during the flood of October ...read more
A Category 4 storm that barreled into the Carolinas during the hurricane season of 1954 left a path of destruction that would eventually pave the way for the development of Myrtle Beach into a major tourist destination. As the first (and so far) only recorded Category 4 storm to ...read more
I heard whooshing sounds… One of the most vivid pictures I have of the day is this waterfall of fire falling down. It was raining fire inside the elevator bank… I yelled ‘Stairs! Follow me!’ I turned right and just started running. —Neil Lucente, then-employee of Network Plus, ...read more
It took 18 days and the efforts of dozens of divers and rescue personnel, but 12 boys and their soccer coach were finallyrescued from the cave complex where they were trapped by floods during Thailand’s monsoon season. Here are five other dramatic rescues that were just as ...read more
Mother Nature can be merciless. From the churning hurricanes of the Gulf Coast, to the trailer-tossing storms of Tornado Alley, to the ground-pounding quakes of California, the United States is no stranger to deadly natural disasters. Here are five of the worst natural disasters ...read more
On April 25, 2014 officials from Flint, Michigan switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River as a cost-cutting measure for the struggling city. In doing so, they unwittingly introduced lead-poisoned water into homes, in what would become a massive public-health crisis. ...read more
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear catastrophe in history. A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine exploded, spreading radioactive clouds all over Europe and a large part of the globe. In all, 50 million curies of ...read more
A crocodile’s jaw crushes down on its victim with 3,700 pounds per square inch of force. That’s more than three-and-a-half times the bite of a lion and 25 times that of a human. Historically, crocodile attacks are 100 times deadlier than shark attacks—and far more ...read more
Chernobyl is a nuclear power plant in Ukraine that was the site of a disastrous nuclear accident on April 26, 1986. A routine test at the power plant went horribly wrong, and two massive explosions blew the 1,000-ton roof off one of the plant’s reactors, releasing 400 times more ...read more
An estimated 100,000 people gathered at the dock in Belfast, Ireland on March 31, 1911, to watch the launch of the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic. Considered to be an “unsinkable” sink, Titanic was the largest and most luxurious cruise liner of its day, measuring more than 882 ...read more
