Forgotten or lesser known about disasters in the United States

Black Tom Explosion - WWI German sabotage on an island in NY harbor. I learned about this while watching a documentary on WWI sabotage and espionage. An ammo depot was ignited. "Shrapnel from the explosion even hit the Statue of Liberty."

LucyMAME.

The time I didn't drain my pasta correctly.

A morbid topic. But the first I remember is the 1970 plane crash that killed a total of 75 people, including 37 members of the Marshall Thundering Herd football team of Marshall University in Huntington West Virginia. I recall reading about it in Readers Digest when I was a kid. They made a film about the story in 2006 starring Matthew McConaughey and how the college and the community struggled to move on from the disaster.

Why the fuck did you need to post the Yuba City school bus crash, OP? Some of us here on the DL lived in Contra Costa at the time and also have relatives who still live in Yuba City. It was horrific and traumatic, especially for the survivors who were on that bus. Every kid in that high school was affected for life. Not going to share any stories here. Thanks for fucking up my weekend. Do you get off on this?

R4 Good movie. The town and school have done a good job of memorializing the victims.

R5 you probably need to see a psychiatrist if you’re this hysterical after 48 years.

Pssst! No one mention the Johnstown Flood around r5. To him it was like it was just yesterday!

22ft. flood kills nearly 100.

Crash of the USS Shenandoah. 14 dead; 29 survived.

Another from 1976 the big Thompson river flood in Colorado. July 31, 1976. 144 killed.

Palm Sunday, 1965, tornadoes in the Midwest.

r5 Really? I actually graduated from the HS to which the bus was headed (several years before this) and I don't even remember this incident.

One word: Molasses!

The Grove fire 1942

Holy shit for Holy Cross!

[quote]Why the fuck did you need to post the Yuba City school bus crash, OP? Some of us here on the DL lived in Contra Costa at the time and also have relatives who still live in Yuba City. It was horrific and traumatic, especially for the survivors who were on that bus. Every kid in that high school was affected for life. Not going to share any stories here. Thanks for fucking up my weekend. Do you get off on this?

I bet they screamed in harmony.

The Shart Disaster

Similar to the Marshall crash the University of Evansville (Indiana) crash in 1977 killed the entire team. That happened behind the neighborhood where we lived, and some of the neighbors who heard it go down went to the crash site to see if there were any survivors.

Basketball team, I should have said. And basketball is huge in that part of the country.

General Slocum.

Over 1,000 dead.

July 17, 1981, Hyatt Walkway collapse during a "tea dance" in Kansas City. 114 killed and 200+ injured.

r16, that was sick as fuck, but also hilarious and so Dataloungesque.

r7, I completely agree with you; however, you can't get decent meds anymore (like fabulous benzodiazapines and awesome opiates), so why bother?

Hadn't thought about the Yuba City school bus crash in decades, as well as so many other SF Bay Area tragedies from back in the day. Jonestown, anyone? Patty Hearst and the SLA? Zodiac and Zebra killers? Milk and Moscone? Was caught off guard by your post. Your post perhaps shows respect and honors the memory of the victims of that particular tragedy. Sorry for being so cunty about it. Absent of good meds, am clearly in need of Claire's bread pudding or some Red Dragon cheese.

R20, The General Slocum was a plot point in a great pre-Code film, "Manhattan Melodrama," with Clark Gable, Myrnal Loy, and William Powell. Mickey Rooney played one of them as a kid, saving the other's life from the fire. He was probably the younger Gable.

R21, I moved to KC a few years after that and it still such a psychic scar for so many people. Like, you learned quickly to never bring it up.

The City of San Francisco train derailment in 1939, which I only recently learned about.

Someone deliberately sabotaged the tracks, but the accident remains unsolved.

24 deaths.

Remember the limo crash that killed an entire wedding party somewhere in New Jersey a few years back?

The Cleveland Clinic fire of 1929.

I only knew about it because my grandmother worked as a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic in the 1930s. If I remember correctly, they lost a number of doctors.

123 deaths.

35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007

R13 are you autistic?

The Hartford circus fire of 1944.

R22 none of those tragedies you mentioned are forgotten or lesser known in any way shape or form. There is something wrong with you.

The Bath school massacre

The Coconut Grove and The Station nightclub fires. The video on The Station fire is chilling.

I love threads like these.

Colliinwood School fire. 172 chikren dead, two teachers.

I survived that R30.

Flight 255 crash in Detroit in 1987.

The mudslide disaster when opal spread her legs in 1974

I remember that r37, one survivor a 4 year old girl who lost her parents and brother in the crash. She was raised by her aunt and uncle and shielded from the press for many years but did an interview for a documentary about lone survivors.

Funny that none of you queens remember the crash of Sabena Airlines Flight 548 in 1961 that wiped out the entire US Figure skating team traveling to the World Championships that year.

More. Especially where children died.

r41 = Mrs. Patsy Ramsey, formerly of Boulder, CO

R40 because it is not lesser known—it is very, very well known among skating fans

R35 Barnabas never mentioned it

If you dig around you can find quite a bit of sad yet fascinating footage of the Hyatt walkway disaster. Not for the faint of heart, but one hell of a rabbit hole.

There was a gay couple at that Hyatt event. One of them was killed, the other survived.

R31, I kind of like r22 for simply apologizing and admitting he/she got triggered. Let it go already. Also, r22 admitted that he/she would function better with fantastic drugs — I relate to that sentiment.

We’ve discussed the Station nightclub fire that occurred on February 20, 2003 before. It’s all the more chilling because there’s actual video of the tragedy. One hundred people lost their lives.

Details about the Station nightclub fire.

The Winecoff Hotel fire, of December 7, 1946, was the deadliest hotel fire in American history, killing 119 hotel occupants, including the hotel's original owners. Located at 176 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, the Winecoff Hotel was advertised as "absolutely fireproof". While the hotel's steel structure was indeed protected against the effects of fire, its interior finishes were combustible and the building's exit arrangements consisted of a single stairway serving all fifteen floors. All of the hotel's occupants above the fire's origin on the third floor were trapped, and the fire's survivors either were rescued from upper-story windows or jumped into nets held by firemen.

The 1980 MGM Grand fire killed 85 people and was stated by a faulty refrigerated pastry display case that wasn’t correctly installed.

The General Slocum disaster is frequently mentioned in James Joyce's "Ulysses" because it happened on June 15th, 1904, the day before the novel takes place (and so its the #1 story in the news that day).

Which was the one started by a hotel employee having sex with another guy while on the job and smoking a joint at the same time?

I still find it incredible that the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse that resulted in 114 deaths and 216 injuries that was determined to have been caused by :

The engineers, Jack D. Gillum and Associates , who had approved the final drawings, was found to be culpable of gross negligence, misconduct, and unprofessional conduct in the practice of engineering. Instead the company lost its engineering licenses in Missouri, Kansas and Texas, and lost its membership with the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The executives and the hands-on architects were more concerned with cost cutting and fast=tracking rather that safety and soundness of the structure. I'm sure the engineers had some corrupt connection with the judicial system ,

The old MGM hotel was Ballys for years now the horseshoe. There are a few claims it’s haunted and workers who have done renovations say there are burn marks in the building.

The 1993 Big Bayou Canot rail accident. As of today, is still the deadliest accident in Amtrak's history: 47 deaths.

R56 Thanks for the link. I recall the tragic incident, but I never did find out what the cause was until now.

This incredible accident happened 89 years ago, Monday, June 25, 1923 as two cars of the BMT derailed and plunged 35 feet into the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn.

Surveying the carnage it is amazing that only 8 were killed and 70 injured in this train accident.

The motorman, P. Parcells survived and told investigators he was coasting, going only 12 mph as he was only 150 feet east of the Fifth Avenue station and preparing to come to a stop. There was a bump and he applied the emergency brakes. But there was nothing to be done as he felt the train grind to the right and begin to leave the tracks and fall over the trestle.

When the first train car went over the guardrail and landed on its side, it was more of a bump than a hard crash. But a few seconds later as dust and smoke were rising from the train and screams for help were heard from the first car, the second car, which was hanging over the guardrail dropped with a sickening crash headfirst onto the pavement and telescoped into the first car. Most of those who were killed were in this second car. It was later determined that the second car was the one that had actually derailed and pushed the first car off of the elevated tracks.

The driver of the automobile in the foreground, Douglas C. Fonda of West Orange N.J., narrowly escaped death when the first car of the train came down on the hood of his Dodge.

An investigation over the next week showed the cause of the accident to be a combination of many factors. The equipment on the carriage of the train was worn and faulty. Many of the guardrails and ties were rotten which enabled the cars to fall to the street. Spikes were not in contact with the road bed, bolts were loose and the rails spread apart too far in some sections.

This accident brought back bad memories to New Yorker’s of the terrible Malbone Street Wreck which had occurred less than five years previously on November 1, 1918. Over 100 people were killed in that subway catastrophe.

The Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland that killed 35 people. Named the deadliest building fire since the The Station nightclub fire.

It was a pretty big deal because several people were living their illegally in their own little "mini residences" (which were illegal) within the warehouse. There was illegal wiring/lighting all over the place, which ended up being part of the cause of the fire. I remember going down the rabbit hole while it was being investigated. It was pretty devastating and sad at that time that so many people were trapped and lost their lives.

The prom.

Chicago’s 1958 Our Lady of Angels school fire killed 92 students and 3 nuns

Pictures