Disasters Events

Cherry is in Bureau county, 100 miles north and slightly west of Decatur, and about 10 miles north of Spring Valley, the home of John Mitchell. It is on a spur of the Chicago, Milwaukee a...

The Cascade Tunnel, completed in 1900, bypassed the switchbacks. Several snowsheds were also added for safety, but winter conditions still presented serious hazards. Trains were often sto...

Official reports after the Big Blowup estimated that 1,736 total fires burned more than 3 million acres of private and federal land and consumed an estimated 7.5 billion board feet of tim...

The disaster, rated as the worst in all interurban history, occurred at a sharp curve, near Kingsland, six miles from Bluffton. The line is operated under a block system and until the rai...

The explosion occurred at 7.50am on 21 Dec 1910, originating at the west end of North Plodder No.2 coal face, some 640 yards (580m) NNW of No.3 Pit, under the fields north of Wood End Far...

On the morning of 23 March, Yongala steamed into Mackay to drop off and receive passengers and discharge 50 tons of cargo, leaving 617 tons in the lower hold - 'properly stowed'. By 1.40 ...

Women and girl machine operators jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors in groups of twos and threes into life nets and their bodies spun downward from the high windows of the bu...

Liberté's magazines explode accidentally on Sept. 25, 1911, destroying the 3-year-old ship and showering her neighbors in Toulon Harbor (including République - below) with twisted, smolde...

Sept. 30, 1911 ushered in the Potter County primary election. Early in the morning, two false fire alarms rattled the town. The Saturday shopping crowd descended on town as men gathered t...

Walter Belford was Titanic's night chief baker. "We were working on the fifth deck amidships baking for the next day. There was a shudder all through the ship about 11:40 PM The provision...

The Helgoland Island Air Disaster occurred on September 9, 1913, and is traditionally considered the first air disaster involving more than ten fatalities. A German Navy Zeppelin L-1 airs...

The worst pit-disaster of the 20th century occurred at the Universal, Senghennydd on 14 October 1913. More than 400 men were trapped underground by an explosion and fire. It ripped throug...

Anyone living in the Great Lakes Region for an extended period of time can become all too familiar with the incredible storms, or low pressure areas, that can settle over the Great Lakes ...

A once-thriving mining town in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula is still haunted by the tragic events that inspired Woody Guthrie's song "1913 Massacre." In Calumet, the past has been...

Only 14 minutes after having being struck by the Storstad, the Empress keeled over. Captain Kendall was thrown from the bridge and was eventually hauled into one of the lifeboats. The cre...

On the morning of June 19th of 1914, a massive methane and coal dust explosion rocked the Hillcrest Collieries coal mine in the Crowsnest Pass of southwestern Alberta, Canada. Miners from...

On 27 November 1914, while taking on ammunition at Sheerness, she “suddenly blew up with an appalling explosion” (Official History vol. II). When the smoke cleared the ship had entirely d...

The 1915 Avezzano earthquake or 1915 L'Aquila earthquake occurred on January 13 in southern Italy, by L'Aquila. The epicenter was located in the town of Avezzano in southern Italy. 30,000...

On May 7, 1915, the German submarine (U-boat) U-20 torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, a swift-moving British cruise liner traveling from New York to Liverpool, England. Of the 1,959 men, w...

On 22 May 1915, a 213 yard long troop train was telescoped down to 67 yards, a third of its original length, when it was involved in a triple collision at Quintinshill, north east of Gret...

Early on the morning of Saturday, July 24, 1915, with a light rain falling and the air filled with much anticipation and excitement, thousands were gathering along the Chicago River f...

The 1915 Galveston Hurricane was a deadly hurricane that struck Leeward Islands, Hispanola, Cuba and Texas, in mid August of the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season. Striking Galveston, Texas,...

On 30th December 1915 Natal was lying in the Cromarty Firth with her squadron under the command of Captain Eric Back RN. Shortly after 3.20pm, and without warning, a series of violent exp...

At 3:20 in the afternoon an explosion killed 27 men in the section of the mine that was affected and burned 4 others who escaped. The 150 men in other sections and those on the outside w...

At 14:20 on Sunday 2nd April 1916, 109 men and boys were killed by an explosion at the gun powder works at Uplees, near Faversham. 200 tons of TNT blew up when some empty sacks caught fir...

The second class, the three-ship Imperatritsa Maria-class, were true dreadnoughts. Displacing 22,600 tons, armed with 12 X 12-inch guns, and capable of 21 knots, they tipped the balance o...

On November 7, 1916, double truck box car No. 393, controlled by hand brakes and having a seating capacity for 34 passengers, left P street barn, North Point, South Boston, at about 5:13 ...

On Friday 19 January 1917, a small community in the East End was ripped apart by an enormous explosion – the biggest London had seen before or has since. But this blast wasn’t caused by e...

A total of 133 people were killed in the explosion, mostly women and young girls. On that Monday, April 10th at about 9:55 a.m., “F” Building of the plant was torn apart by a terrible exp...

The funnel of the tornado on May 26, 1917 first appeared at noon just west of a small town southeast of Quincy (Wilson and Changnon, 1971). It moved east along a remarkably straight line ...

The eighth HMS Vanguard was the victim of an internal explosion. Her magazine was detonated by unstable cordite and within seconds the battleship was annihilated together with all but th...

The men died on 24 September 1917 when they mistakenly got off their train at Bere Ferrers thinking they had arrived at their destination of Exeter. In fact the train had only stopped ...

The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo shi...

In the Minnie pit at Halmerend, North Staffordshire , on January 12 th 1918 the conditions prevailing at the time were, begging disaster. A spark was all that was needed,and this was p...

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans...

At 3.56am on 22 June 1918, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train had been moved onto a siding while it awaited clearance to proceed onto the line to Hammond where the circus was due to perfo...

It's the forgotten tragedy in which 134 Nottingham workers were killed, and dozens more injured. It was also Britain's worst ever disaster involving an explosion. Although it happened ...

Because somebody blundered, at least 121 persons were killed and fifty-seven injured shortly after 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning, when Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway passenger ...

In 1918 F 1200 was involved in the severe accident at Getå when passenger train 422 was derailed and hurled down a high embankment built against the mountainside along the sea. 41 people ...

On October 12 1918, a massive forest fire raced through northeastern Minnesota from Sturgeon Lake to Lake Superior north of Duluth. When it was over, this region had suffered through , on...

Princess Sophia, was built for the Alaska run, and made her maiden voyage on June 7, 1912. She was not a fancy ship, her hull was short and had high freeboard, but she had comfortable acc...

A Brighton Beach Train of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, made up of five wooden cars of the oldest type in use, which was speeding with a rush hour crowd to make up lost time on its ...

Iolaire cast off from Kyle at 7.30pm on Old Year’s Night. At half past midnight she was twelve miles from Stornoway where the armed drifter Budding Rose was waiting to escort her into har...

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachu...

The volcano sits on the island of Java, about 385 miles east of the capital of Jakarta. It last erupted in 1990, killing dozens. In 1919, an explosion that blew the top off the mountain k...

Whilst over the Humber the [ZR-2] airship carried out some high speed turns. The stress on the fuselage was too much and the craft broke in two, causing a large explosion, which blew out ...

The Oppau explosion occurred on September 21, 1921 when a tower silo storing 4,500 tonnes of a mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded at a BASF plant in Oppa...

Accumulated snowfall from a blizzard collapses the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1922. The blizzard formed in the Carolinas on January 26 and moved into the...

On April 7, 1922 the first midair collision of commercial airliners took place some 70 miles North of Paris. The aircraft involved were a deHaviland DH-18A and a Farman F-60, also known ...

On September 1, 1923, just before noon, an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 occurred near the densely populated, modern industrial cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan. The epicenter was placed...