Columbia Space Shuttle mission ends in disaster


On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia breaks up while entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew members on board.

The Columbia‘s 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was delayed numerous times for a variety of reasons over nearly two years. Columbia finally launched on January 16, 2003, with a crew of seven. Eighty seconds into the launch, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the shuttle’s propellant tank and hit the edge of the shuttle’s left wing.

Cameras focused on the launch sequence revealed the foam collision but engineers could not pinpoint the location and extent of the damage. Although similar incidents had occurred on three prior shuttle launches without causing critical damage, some engineers at the space agency believed that the damage to the wing could cause a catastrophic failure. Their concerns were not addressed in the two weeks that Columbia spent in orbit because NASA management believed that even if major damage had been caused, there was little that could be done to remedy the situation.

Columbia reentered the earth’s atmosphere on the morning of February 1. It wasn’t until 10 minutes later, at 8:53 a.m.–as the shuttle was 231,000 feet above the California coastline traveling at 23 times the speed of sound–that the first indications of trouble began. Because the heat-resistant tiles covering the left wing’s leading edge had been damaged or were missing, wind and heat entered the wing and blew it apart.

The first debris began falling to the ground in west Texas near Lubbock at 8:58 a.m. One minute later, the last communication from the crew was heard, and at 9 a.m. the shuttle disintegrated over southeast Texas, near Dallas. Residents in the area heard a loud boom and saw streaks of smoke in the sky. Debris and the remains of the crew were found in more than 2,000 locations across East Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Making the tragedy even worse, two pilots aboard a search helicopter were killed in a crash while looking for debris. Strangely, worms that the crew had used in a study that were stored in a canister aboard the Columbia did survive.

In August 2003, an investigation board issued a report that revealed that it in fact would have been possible either for the Columbia crew to repair the damage to the wing or for the crew to be rescued from the shuttle. The Columbia could have stayed in orbit until February 15 and the already planned launch of the shuttle Atlantis could have been moved up as early as February 10, leaving a short window for repairing the wing or getting the crew off of the Columbia.

In the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, the space shuttle program was grounded until July 16, 2005, when the space shuttle Discovery was put into orbit.

READ MORE: Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

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Circus catches fire in Brazil


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Year
1961
Month Day
December 17

On December 17, 1961, a fire at a circus in Brazil kills more than 300 people and severely burns hundreds more. The cause of the fire was never conclusively determined but it may have been the result of sparks from a train passing nearby.

Christmas week was just beginning, the children had just begun their winter vacations, and spirits were high for the 2,500 in attendance at the Gran Circo Norte Americano, the Brazilian version of America’s Ringling Brothers. The large blue-and-white tent was set up across the bay from Rio de Janeiro and was filled to capacity. All seemed to be proceeding as planned when disaster struck suddenly.

Antonietta Estavanovich, a trapeze artist, was the first to see the flames. From her high perch, she could see the roof of the tent beginning to burn. As the crowd became aware of the fire, pandemonium ensued and people were trampled as they tried to exit. In one reported instance, a Boy Scout attending the circus pulled out a knife, cut a hole in the tent and managed to get his family out safely. Hundreds of others, though, were not so lucky–323 people, many of them children, died in the fire. At least 500 more people were seriously injured, from burns, smoke inhalation and trampling.

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Cargo ship suddenly sinks in Lake Superior

Year
1975
Month Day
November 10

On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board. It was the worst single accident in Lake Superior’s history.

The ship weighed more than 13,000 tons and was 730 feet long. It was launched in 1958 as the biggest carrier in the Great Lakes and became the first ship to carry more than a million tons of iron ore through the Soo Locks.

On November 9, the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, with 26,000 tons of ore heading for Detroit, Michigan. The following afternoon, Ernest McSorely, the captain of the Fitzgerald and a 44-year veteran, contacted the Avafor, another ship traveling on Lake Superior and reported that his ship had encountered “one of the worst seas he had ever been in.” The Fitzgerald had lost its radar equipment and was listing badly to one side.

A couple of hours later, another ship made contact and was told that the Fitzgerald was holding its own. However, minutes afterward, the Fitzgerald disappeared from radar screens. A subsequent investigation showed that the sinking of the Fitzgerald occurred very suddenly; no distress signal was sent and the condition of the lifeboats suggested that little or no attempt was made to abandon the ship.

One possible reason for the wreck is that the Fitzgerald was carrying too much cargo. This made the ship sit low in the water and made it more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a sudden large wave. The official report also cited the possibility that the hatches to the cargo area may have been faulty, leading to a sudden shift of the cargo that capsized the boat.

The Fitzgerald was eventually found 530 feet below the surface, 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, at the northeastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The ship had broken into two parts that were found approximately 150 feet apart. As there were no survivors among the 29 crewmembers, there will likely never be a definitive explanation of the Fitzgerald‘s sinking.

The Fitzgerald‘s sinking was the worst wreck in the Great Lakes since November 29, 1966, when 28 people died in the sinking of the Daniel J. Morrell in Lake Huron.

The disaster was immortalized in song the following year in Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

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Bullfight spectators die when bleachers collapse

On January 20, 1980, bleachers at a bullring in Sincelejo, Colombia, collapse, resulting in the deaths of 222 people.

The collapse at Sincelejo, the deadliest tragedy at a sporting event in Colombia’s history, was the result of overcrowding and poor construction. In addition to the 222 spectators killed, hundreds more were injured. Despite the fact that bullrings were more closely regulated and inspected in the aftermath of Sincelejo, a temporary bleachers in Honda, 60 miles southeast of Bogota, collapsed in February 1989. In that incident, seven people died and 300 more were injured.

Disaster again struck a Colombia bullring in October 2006. A partial collapse of the spectator stands in Doima injured more than 100 people. Such collapses have taken place in the United States as well. During a high school photo session in Richardson, Texas, in March 2001, 42 students were injured during a collapse. In June 1986, wooden bleachers at a circus in Greenport, New York, collapsed and injured 68 people, two of whom suffered serious spinal fractures. 

When wooden bleachers were still common in the United States at the turn of the 19th century, the most notorious collapse disaster was at a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves in 1903. In the second game of a doubleheader, an altercation between two drunken men and some teenagers caused a commotion that drew the crowd to the top of the bleacher area. Suddenly, the bleachers collapsed and hundreds of people crashed 35 feet to the ground. Twelve people died and 232 were seriously injured.

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Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, sinks in Aegean Sea

Year
1916
Month Day
November 21

The Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, sinks in the Aegean Sea on November 21, 1916, killing 30 people. More than 1,000 others were rescued.

In the wake of the Titanic disaster on April 14, 1912, the White Star Line made several modifications in the construction of its already-planned sister ship. First, the name was changed from Gigantic to Britannic (probably because it seemed more humble) and the design of the hull was altered to make it less vulnerable to icebergs. In addition, it was mandated that there be enough lifeboats on board to accommodate all passengers, which had not been the case with the Titanic.

The nearly 50,000-ton luxury vessel, the largest in the world, was launched in 1914, but was requisitioned soon afterward by the British government to serve as a hospital ship during World War I. In this capacity, Captain Charlie Bartlett led the Britannic on five successful voyages bringing wounded British troops back to England from various ports around the world.

WATCH: Titanic’s Tragic Sister Ship 

On November 21, the Britannic was on its way to pick up more wounded soldiers near the Gulf of Athens, when at 8:12 a.m., a violent explosion rocked the ship. Captain Bartlett ordered the closure of the watertight doors and sent out a distress signal. However, the blast had already managed to flood six whole compartments—even more extensive damage than that which had sunk the Titanic. Still, the Britannic had been prepared for such a disaster and would have stayed afloat except for two critical matters.

First, Captain Bartlett decided to try to run the Britannic aground on the nearby island of Kea. This might have been successful, but, earlier, the ship’s nursing staff had opened the portholes to air out the sick wards. Water poured in through the portholes as the Britannic headed toward Kea. Second, the disaster was compounded when some of the crew attempted to launch lifeboats without orders. Since the ship was still moving as fast as it could, the boats were sucked into the propellers, killing those on board.

Less than 30 minutes later, Bartlett realized that the ship was going to sink and ordered it abandoned. The lifeboats were launched and even though the Britannic sank at 9:07, less than an hour after the explosion, nearly 1,100 people managed to make it off the ship. In fact, most of the 30 people who died were in the prematurely launched lifeboats. In 1976, famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau found the Britannic lying on its side 400 feet below the surface of the Aegean. The cause of the explosion remains unknown, but many believe that the Britannic hit a mine.

READ MORE: The Titanic: Before and After Photos 

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Blizzard brings tragedy to Northwest Plains


Year
1888
Month Day
January 12

On January 12, 1888, the so-called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United States. The storm came with no warning, and some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in just 24 hours.

It was a Thursday afternoon and there had been unseasonably warm weather the previous day from Montana east to the Dakotas and south to Texas. Suddenly, within a matter of hours, Arctic air from Canada rapidly pushed south. Temperatures plunged to 40 below zero in much of North Dakota. Along with the cool air, the storm brought high winds and heavy snows. The combination created blinding conditions.

Most victims of the blizzard were children making their way home from school in rural areas and adults working on large farms. Both had difficulty reaching their destinations in the awful conditions. In some places, though, caution prevailed. Schoolteacher Seymour Dopp in Pawnee City, Nebraska, kept his 17 students at school when the storm began at 2 p.m. They stayed overnight, burning stockpiled wood to keep warm. The next day, parents made their way over five-foot snow drifts to rescue their children. In Great Plains, South Dakota, two men rescued the children in a schoolhouse by tying a rope from the school to the nearest shelter to lead them to safety. Minnie Freeman, a teacher in Nebraska, successfully led her children to shelter after the storm tore the roof off of her one-room schoolhouse. In other cases, though, people were less lucky. Teacher Loie Royce tried to lead three children to the safety of her home, less than 90 yards from their school in Plainfield, Nebraska. They became lost, and the children died of hypothermia. Royce lost her feet to frostbite.

In total, an estimated 235 people across the plains died on January 12. The storm is still considered one of the worst blizzards in the history of the area.

READ MORE: Major Blizzards in U.S. History

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Blizzard of 1996 begins


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Year
1996
Month Day
January 06

On January 6, 1996, snow begins falling in Washington, D.C., and up the Eastern seaboard, beginning a blizzard that kills 154 people and causes over $1 billion in damages before it ends.

The Blizzard of 1996 began in typical fashion, as cold air from Canada pushed down and collided with relatively warm winds from the Gulf of Mexico. The clashing weather fronts caused a terrible combination of snow and wind. Snow began to fall in the District of Columbia about 9 p.m.; 12 inches fell over the course of the next 24 hours. In Lynchburg, Virginia, it was worse: A record 20 inches of snow fell in a single day. Since wind gusts were reaching up to 50 miles per hour, snow drifts piled up in many areas and travel was nearly impossible.

As the storm moved northeast, it continued to break records. Newark, New Jersey, received a total of 28 inches over several days. Providence, Rhode Island, received 32 inches and Philadelphia was inundated with 30 inches. The Philadelphia schools were closed until January 16 due to the city’s inability to clear the heavy snow promptly from the streets.

Overall, the blizzard took a serious toll on both people and property. A church roof in Harlem collapsed, injuring several people in New York City. Barns all over Pennsylvania collapsed under the weight of so much snow. As a precaution, many supermarkets, which often feature large flat roofs, closed across the region. Two buses collided in Pittsburgh and 52 were seriously injured. The storm deaths were mainly the result of traffic accidents, collapsed trees and homeless people dying from hypothermia. In a few instances, people who were trapped in their cars died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Pennsylvania suffered the most deaths, with approximately 80.

President Bill Clinton was forced to shut down the federal government for nearly a week because of the storm. He declared D.C. and nine states to be disaster areas. Estimates of the total property damage suffered ranged from $600 million to $3 billion.

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Black Death is created, allegedly


Year
1345
Month Day
March 20

According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on March 20, 1345, from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345″. The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead in its wake.

READ MORE: Pandemics That Changed History: Timeline

Despite what these 14th-century scholars claimed the most common ailment known as the Black Death is caused by the yersinia pestis bacterium. The plague was carried by fleas that usually traveled on rats, but jumped off to other mammals when the rat died. It most likely first appeared in humans in Mongolia around 1320. Usually, people who came down with the plague first complained of headaches, fever and chills. Their tongues often appeared a whitish color before there was severe swelling of the lymph nodes. Finally, black and purple spots appeared on the skin of the afflicted; death could follow within a week. Later, a pneumonic form of the plague developed that was less common but killed 95 percent of the people who contracted it.

After the nomadic tribes of Mongolia were devastated by the plague, it moved south and east to China and India. Wherever it went, the death toll was high. It is thought that the disease made its way to Europe in 1346. In one famous incident, the Tatars, a group of Turks, were battling Italians from Genoa in the Middle East when the Tatars were suddenly stuck down by the plague. Reportedly, they began catapulting dead bodies over the Genoans’ walls toward their enemy, who fled back to Italy with the disease. Although this account may not be true, it is certain that rats carrying the plague hitched rides on ships from Asia and the Middle East to Europe. In port cities everywhere, the Black Death began to strike. In Venice, 100,000 people died in total, with as many as 600 dying every day at the peak of the outbreak.

READ MORE: Rats Didn’t Spread the Black Death—It Was Humans

In 1347, the disease worked its way to France and Paris lost an estimated 50,000 people. The following year, Britain fell victim. Typically, countries would believe themselves to be superior and immune to infection when their neighbors came down with the plague, but soon found they were mistaken as the Black Death traveled across Eurasia, spreading devastation in its wake. By the time the worst was over in 1352, one third of the continent’s population was dead.

Devastation on this scale brought out the worst in people. Often, it was not the movement of stars that was blamed for the disease, but the minorities in the community. Witches and gypsies were frequent targets. Jewish people were tortured and burned to death by the thousands for supposedly causing the Black Death. Preachers claimed that the disease was God’s punishment for immorality. Many turned to prayer and those that did survive ascribed their good luck to their devotion, resulting in the rise of splinter religions and cults in the aftermath of the plague’s destruction. Alternatively, some resorted to useless home cures to try to avoid the disease, bathing in urine or menstrual blood in an attempt to deter it.

The plague popped up periodically until the 1700s, but never again reached epidemic proportions after the 14th century.

READ MORE: How 5 of History’s Worst Pandemics Finally Ended

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Airship crashes in France

Year
1930
Month Day
October 05

On October 5, 1930, a British dirigible crashes in Beauvais, France, killing everyone onboard. The airship, which was Great Britain’s biggest, had first been launched about a year earlier.

In the 1920s, the major European nations competed with each other to build larger and larger airships in order to gain control over the fledgling air-travel industry. As the decade came to an end, the R-101 was Great Britain’s latest model. It was 777 feet long, weighed 150 tons and could carry 100 passengers. It was powered by six Rolls-Royce engines.

On its maiden voyage on October 14, 1929, engine troubles arose immediately, causing the R-101 to be grounded for almost a year. Finally, it was brought back into service the following October with assistance from Lord Thomson, a member of Parliament who championed the endeavor. Thomson was one of four passengers, along with a 52-member crew, on board the dirigible as it took off on the evening of October 5 for a trip to the Far East.

The trip was problematic from the start. First, the crew accidentally released four tons of water ballast, the weight carried in order to control altitude, at the outset of the trip. They also took off straight into a storm hovering over the English Channel, even though dirigibles were known to be dangerous in bad weather. As soon as the R-101 reached the air over France, it was not able to hold a level altitude and was flying only 250 feet above the town of Poix. The pilots were not aware of the problem because of the dark night. Soon, the the ship was skimming the trees of Beauvais. Eventually it hit a small ridge and the impact ignited the airship’s hydrogen supply.

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Baseball star Roberto Clemente dies in plane crash


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Year
1972
Month Day
December 31

Roberto Clemente, future Hall of Fame baseball player, is killed along with four others when the cargo plane in which he is traveling crashes off the coast of Puerto Rico. Clemente was on his way to deliver relief supplies to Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake there a week earlier.

At the end of September, Clemente had gotten his 3,000th hit in the final game of the season for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a hero in his native Puerto Rico, where he spent much of the off-season doing charity work. Some of his charitable work had taken him to Nicaragua, so Clemente was particularly distressed when he learned that very little aid was getting to victims of a devastating December 23 earthquake near Managua.

Clemente decided to collect supplies on his own and personally deliver them. The plan went awry when Clemente chose for the mission a plane owned by Arthur Rivera. Rivera had bought an old DC-7 propeller plane to go along with a DC-3 he operated to haul cargo in the Caribbean. Apparently, the plane was in such bad shape that others wondered why Rivera had bothered to purchase it. In fact, the DC-7 had to be ferried from Miami to Puerto Rico.

Rivera painted the exterior but did not do any significant work to the engine. This came as no surprise to safety crews at the airports out of which Rivera worked: He had been repeatedly cited for safety violations in previous years. On December 2, Rivera took the DC-7 out to test the engine but forgot to close the hydraulic pump and ended up putting the plane into a drainage ditch. This bent two of the propeller blades and damaged the landing gear. Only some of these damages were fixed prior to the December 31 flight.

On the previous day, Clemente was at San Juan International Airport’s cargo area helping to load relief supplies when he discovered there were far more than could be carried in the plane he had available. Rivera approached Clemente and offered to fly the supplies to Nicaragua for $4,000, not telling Clemente he had no crew for the plane. Clemente agreed and Rivera scrambled to find a pilot. He located Jerry Hill, who had a checkered record, and began to load the plane. It was later determined that Rivera loaded the plane over its maximum capacity. In fact, Clemente himself was warned by someone at the airport that the plane looked dangerously overloaded when he was about to board.

The plane took off at 9 p.m. and the sounds of engine failure were heard as it went down the runway. It reached an altitude of only 200 feet before exploding and plunging into the ocean. Rescue workers were sent out immediately, but the task was next to impossible in the darkness. The bodies were never found. The news hit Puerto Rico hard–one friend of Clemente described it as the “night that happiness died.”

A subsequent investigation into the crash revealed that the plane never should have been put in the air and that the pilot had erred by over-boosting the engines.

In 1973, Clemente was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2002, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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