Disasters Events

The ship set off from Shanghai on 8 October, due to arrive at Hong Kong on the 11th and was then bound for Colombo and Bombay. On board were 148 people, as well as silk, tea and general c...

One of the saddest stories in all railway history is that of the Thirsk disaster of November 2, 1892, when through the mistake of a signalman the Flying Scotchman dashed into a goods trai...

The disaster occurred in clear sunny weather on June 22, 1893, during fleet maneuvers off the coast of Syria. The officer in command, Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, was a fearsome martine...

On August 27, 1893 a major hurricane which came to be known as the Sea Islands Hurricane struck the United States near Savannah, Georgia. It was one of two deadly hurricanes during the 18...

Originating near the Yucatan Peninsula, a compact and fast-moving hurricane rode a low pressure trough across the river and bayou plains of extreme Southeastern Louisiana at such an angle...

As we bave been informed by cable, a disaster unparalleled in modern times occurred at Santander (Old Castilo) on the afternoon of 3rd November. A Spanish steamer, the Cabo Machichaco, ca...

The Great Hinckley Fire was a major conflagration on September 1, 1894, which burned an area of 420 square miles (1,100 km2) centered on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota. The fire killed h...

The SS Wairarapa was a first class steamer owned by the Union Steam Ship Company that carried both passengers and cargo between Australia and New Zealand. On the 29th October 1894, the...

Gare Montparnasse became famous for a derailment on 22 October 1895 of the Granville-Paris Express that overran the buffer stop. The engine careered across almost 30 metres (98 ft) of the...

Nicholas II was crowned Tsar of Russia on May 14 , 1896. Four days later, a banquet was going to be held for the people at Khodynka Field. In the area of one town square, theaters, 150 bu...

On May 26, 1896 in Victoria, British Columbia, a streetcar crowded with 143 holidaymakers on their way to attend celebrations of Queen Victoria’s birthday, crashed through Point Ellice Br...

This tornado, which was to be one of the deadliest in US history, touched down about 6 miles west of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. From the northwest edge of Tower Grove Park, this comple...

Twenty-seven thousand people died in a huge tsunami that swept over the seaport of Kamaishi, Japan, on June 15, 1896. A local earthquake cause mild shaking of the port city, which was not...

Crush, Texas, was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (popularly known...

A special to the Commercial Appeal from Birmingham, Ala., says: Fiends in human form wrecked the Birmingham Mineral branch passenger train No. 40 at Cahaba river bridge twenty-seven miles...

The Maine spent her active career operating along the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean. In January 1898, the Maine was sent from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, to pr...

Seventy men were entombed Friday in the Empire Mine of Snowdon, Gould & Co., one fourth of a mile below town, as the result of an explosion of gas, followed by another explosion of fire d...

The Atlantic Transport Company's steamer Mohegan, formerly the Cleopatra of the Wilson and Furness-Leyland Line, which left London for New York yesterday with 50 passengers and a crew num...

It is estimated that over 150 vessels were lost, both in the harbors and at sea. Many were never heard from after sailing. Miles of coastline from Buzzards Bay to Cape Ann were strewn wit...

The Scofield mine disaster occurred on 1 May 1900 when an explosion ripped through the Winter Quarters Number Four mine located west of Scofield. Men working in the mine were killed outri...

Nearly a hundred people, passengers on a car bound for this city, were plunged into a gulch at Twenty-sixth and C Streets shortly after 8 o'clock this morning. Those who were standing on ...

Prescott is home to the historical area known as "Whiskey Row", until 1956 a notorious red-light district. In 1900, a great fire destroyed most of the buildings on Whiskey Row. As legend ...

The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston in the U.S. state of Texas, on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (217 km/h) at landfall, making ...

At about 7:50 a.m. on May 8, the volcano erupted with a deafening roar. A large black cloud composed of superheated gas, ash and rock rolled headlong down the south flank of Mt. Pelée at ...

30 million cubic metres of limestone broke free from the mountain and crashed down towards the sleeping populace of Frank. In a mere minute and a half a landslide one kilometre wide and 4...

The first sign of trouble was at 6:53 p.m., when double train 43 completed the climb to Boulevard Barbès station with heavy smoke pouring from one of the motors on its front car, car M202...

Of the Sixteen People on Ill-fated Train, Not One Escaped Serious Injury -Scene of Wreck Was Long Trestle Just North of Danville, Va.--Railroad Men Believe Accident Was Caused by the Brea...

Running at the rate of thirty miles an hour, a Big Four special train of six coaches, loaded with students of Purdue University, including the football team, was wrecked just inside the c...

The most appalling disaster in the history of the Pittsburg Division of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad occurred at Laurel run, two miles west of Dawson, last evening. Sixty-eight passenger...

The Iroquois Theater Fire (December 30, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois) was the deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history. The blaze took 571 lives within 20 minutes, and including those ...

The General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark's Evangelica...

SS Norge was a Danish passenger liner sailing from Copenhagen, Oslo and Kristiansand to New York, mainly with emigrants, which sank off Rockall in 1904 in the biggest civilian maritime di...

The No. 15 crashed head-on into the eastbound No. 12 train due to the unannounced schedule change. At that time, railroads had no block signals to control the rail traffic, and the trains...

Located on the corner of Main and Calmar streets in the largely Swedish neighborhood of the Campello section of Brockton, the Grover factory burst into flames at 7:50 am on March 20, 1905...

1905 Kangra earthquake was a major earthquake that occurred in the Kangra Valley and the Kangra region of Himachal Pradesh in India on 4 April 1905. The earthquake measured 7.8 on the sur...

On Monday, January 22, 1906, the coastal passenger liner SS Valencia, en route from San Francisco to Seattle with 108 passengers and 65 crew aboard, passed the entrance to the Strait of J...

The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst mining accident, caused the death of 1,099 miners (including many children) in Northern France on 10 March 1906. It seems that this disaster w...

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a magnitude 8.3 (Richter Scale) earthquake struck San Francisco. With thousands of un-reinforced brick buildings and closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwelli...

By the wrecking of a three-coach electric train on the West Jersey and Seashore railroad, this afternoon, at least fifty passengers perished and the list may reach a total of 75. Whil...

In 1907, 800 people died in another earthquake known as the 1907 Kingston earthquake, destroying nearly all the historical buildings south of Parade in the city. That was when a restricti...

Iéna was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy. Her design was derived from the preceding Charlemagne class battleships with a heavier secondary battery and thicker armour. She ...

Thirty-one persons were killed and more than seventy injured, many of them seriously, when a Pere Marquette excursion train bound from Ionia to Detroit crashed into a west-bound freight t...

When the huge uncompleted span of the St Lawrence cantilever bridge near Quebec fell into the river on August 29th last, one of the greatest engineering undertakings of the century became...

The worst mining disaster in American History occurred in the community of Monongah, West Virginia on December 6, 1907. Around 10 o'clock in the morning after a full force of 380 men and ...

On January 13, 1908 the Boyertown Opera House in the Rhoads Building on Philadelphia Ave. was the scene of a tragic fire. A kerosene lantern was accidentally knocked over starting a fire ...

The COLLINWOOD SCHOOL FIRE occurred on 4 Mar. 1908, killing 172 children and 2 teachers at Lakeview Elementary School in the village of COLLINWOOD. The fire began shortly after 9 a.m when...

The most terrible accident that the state has yet encountered occurred at Sunshine Station (formally known as Braybrook), on Monday night, when the Bendigo express dashed into the rear of...

It is generally accepted that the Tunguska event resulted from the catastrophic disruption of a large meteor high above the ground. Previous studies have yielded diverse interpretations a...

On the early morning of December 28, 1908, the Italian city of Messina awoke to the deadliest earthquake in European history. Striking just days after Christmas in the Straits of Messina,...

The temporary Crib used in the construction of the Southwest Land and Lake Tunnel System, situated on the line of the tunnel seventy-five hundred feet from the shore, caught fire from som...