More souls died on the Riverboat Sultana than the RMS Titanic!
Category Archives: Historical Disasters
5 Reasons the 1889 Johnstown Flood Should Never Have Happened
The Johnstown Pennsylvania Flood of 1889 was more a man-made Tsunami than flood by Mother Nature.
Was the Great Chicago Fire Started by a Cow?
It is true the infamous fire started in the barn of Catherine and Patrick O’Leary on Sunday night, October 8th, 1871.
The Lusitania Sank in Just 18 Minutes, Beating Titanic!
The ocean liner Lusitania was struck by a German torpedo in 1915 and sunk within sight of the Irish coast in just 18 Minutes! Compare that to the rather luxurious sinking of the Titanic three years earlier in 1912 that lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. We have all seen the popular movie, so justContinue reading “The Lusitania Sank in Just 18 Minutes, Beating Titanic!”
The Windscale Nuclear Disaster – Britain’s Chernobyl
In 1957, in an English seaside town, a new type of disaster occurred when a fire broke out at the Windscale nuclear reactors. The fire, at the two-reactor facility in Cumbria (now Sellafield), was due to poor design and gross mismanagement, leading to deadly consequences. The incident became embroiled in Cold War-era secrecy and provedContinue reading “The Windscale Nuclear Disaster – Britain’s Chernobyl”
The MV Doña Paz – the Worst Maritime Disaster in History
While the Titanic and Lusitania may be the more famous shipwrecks, their death toll was but a third of the world’s deadliest, taking the lives of over 4,300 souls. Just five days before Christmas, the MV Doña Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker, burnt to the water line, and sank in the Philippine Sea. Continue reading “The MV Doña Paz – the Worst Maritime Disaster in History”
The Great Bengal Famine and the Boston Tea Party
The Indian Famine of 1770 is one of the greatest disasters in human history. Over ten million people, a third of the population of Bengal, died. A drought lasting 5 years, bad harvests, and cruel British rule all contributed. The British East India Company compounded the famine with heavy taxation, leading to millions of BengalisContinue reading “The Great Bengal Famine and the Boston Tea Party”
The Ignored and Forgotten Lake Nyos Disaster
The 1986 Lake Nyos Disaster occurred when volcanic carbon dioxide (CO2) gas erupted from beneath an African lake in Cameroon, bubbling to the surface and forming a deadly cloud. There was no huge eruption, no great boom or blast to warn people. What resulted however was like a scene from a horror movie. The deadlyContinue reading “The Ignored and Forgotten Lake Nyos Disaster”
The Forgotten Sinking of the Empress of Ireland
Just two years after the Titanic, and a year before Lusitania, another passenger ship sank with an even greater loss of life, yet few remember the tragic tale. The Empress of Ireland sank in Canada’s St. Lawrence River in the spring of 1914 after colliding with another ship in a dense fog bank in theContinue reading “The Forgotten Sinking of the Empress of Ireland”
The Tragic Sinking of China’s SS Kiangya
On the night of December 4th,1948, the passenger steamship SS Kiangya exploded and sank just north of Shanghai, China. It was the world’s worst non-military maritime disaster at the time. The steamship blew up at the mouth of the Yangtze River, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Shanghai and rapidly sank. The suspected cause – a mineContinue reading “The Tragic Sinking of China’s SS Kiangya”