In 1981, a walkway in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring 200 more. A change in the original design of a series of walkways suspended above the lobby’s hotel led to a connection failure. The original design had all of the walkways suspended from the ceiling with steel …
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The Cleveland East Ohio tragedy occurred on Friday, October 20, 1944. At 2:30 p.m., laboratory workers at the East Ohio Gas Company spotted white vapour coming out of above-ground storage tank number 4, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tank at the gas company’s Lake Erie tank farm. Gas was flowing from the tank and wind …
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This short article covers the circumstances surrounding the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 and the steps taken to correct the root cause of the accident. Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry On February 1, 2003, space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to earth’s, killing the seven astronauts on board. The investigation …
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The Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1940 and collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. At the time it was the third longest suspension bridge in the world, just behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. Fortunately no human life was lost during …
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What really happened to the Hindenburg? A German passenger airship called The LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and crashed during its attempt to dock in New Jersey on May 6, 1937, just after completing a transatlantic flight from Frankfurt, Germany three days earlier. The incident shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying rigid airship and …
RMS Titanic was the biggest, most luxurious and the most expensive ship on the waters back in 1912. This is a ship which was widely advertised as unsinkable, a statement which came back to haunt the owners! Sinking of the Titanic Some of the most prominent people of the day booked a passage aboard …
The launch of the shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986 was a huge television event, largely because one of the astronauts was New Hampshire’s Christa McAuliffe, a member of the Teacher in Space program. This was a NASA program announced by Ronald Reagan in 1984 to inspire students, honor teachers, and spur interest in the flagging space …
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In response to severe flooding and to ensure electrical power generation in 1949 and 1950, China built the Banqiao Dam in the Huai river basin of the Henan province. It was completed in 1952. However, they never imagined the dangers that would follow. Understanding the Banqiao Dam Failure Due to construction and engineering errors, numerous …
“Eureka! Gold is found!” …though the expression “Eureka” is often attributed to Archimedes, it was likely not he who coined the phrase. The ancient legend says that Archimedes was asked by the local king to find out if he could have been defrauded in the manufacture of a new golden crown, and if it might have …
On the morning of July 25th, 2000, there was an Air France Concorde crash moments after takeoff from near Paris based International Airport, Charles de Gaulle, killing 113 people. During takeoff, suddenly a tire was cut by a piece of metal strip debris that was lying on the way, and a large chunk of the ruptured tire …
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