fascinatinghorror

The White Lund Explosion

In this video I touch on the toxic jaundice suffered by munitions workers during the First World War. One effect of it was to turn their skin yellow, leading to them being given the nickname of “canary girls”.

It’s a story that’s quite reminiscent of The Radium Girls in America… a workplace health disaster that also happened during wartime. Just like in that story, although some danger was susp...

The Sinking of the Lusitania

As with many disasters, there are a few stories about people who – at the very last minute – decided not to board the doomed ship. One that I found particularly interesting is a story concerning a woman named Alta Piper, daughter of the famous psychic medium Leonora Piper.

Alta was due to sail on the Lusitania, but didn’t board. She later claimed that she heard a voice the night before informing her that if she entered her berth she would never emerge alive.

The Man Who Spared Hitler

One piece of evidence that supports this story takes the form of a painting. Italian artist Fortunino Matania produced a painting from a photograph that featured Henry Tandey carrying a wounded soldier. Here’s that painting:

When showing off a copy of this painting, Hitler is alleged to have pointed to Tandey and identified him as the man who spared his life. It’s a compelling st...

The Aggie Bonfire Collapse

As you might expect from such a long-held tradition, there’s a lot of history around the Aggie Bonfire. One thoroughly memorable footnote (that I couldn’t find space for in the video) concerns the many attempts through the years to light it up before it was due to be burned.

Schemes have included planting explosives in the stack, and even hiring an aircraft to fly over the build site and drop firebombs. This (quite eccentric) plan was tried twice, once in 1933 and once in 1...

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

In the video I mention that many insurers only paid out claims relating to damages caused by fire, not damages caused by the quake itself. One exception to this was Lloyds of London. In the aftermath of the disaster one of their head underwriters, Cuthbert Heath, sent a cable from London which said to, “Pay all of our policy holders in full irrespective of the terms of their policies.”

This was a pretty unusual move for an insurance broker, but Lloyds of London nonetheless followed ...

The Deadly Manchineel Tree

A manchineel might be one of the deadliest fruits on the planet… but we do still have some indications as to what it tastes like. Here’s one account I found where the person who took a bite compares it to a very sweet, perfectly-ripe green apple. In this case, luckily, they spat out the fruit, and suffered only a few hours of burning pain in their mou...

A Brief History of Asbestos

I’ve lived in some pretty old buildings in my life, some of which were built around the peak of asbestos use in the UK.

The house I lived in as a child, for example, was built in the late 1800s. There was asbestos in the roof of the garden shed (which we never used) but no asbestos in the actual house itself. My family say this is because the building was hit by a bomb in the Second World War, and the roof was replaced, leading to the complete removal of the most likely spot for asbes...

The Clutha Helicopter Crash

In some footage of this disaster you can see Search and Rescue dogs brought in to look for survivors in the aftermath of the disaster. During my background reading I happened to stumble across a story about one of these dogs.

His name was Taz, and he was a Border Collie, who went on to live to the age of 14 (not bad for a dog with a job as stressful as his). During that time he assis...

The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

I mention a couple of the most common theories about Poe’s death in the video… but there are plenty more out there that are worth considering. This article gives a good rundown of all the most likely ones. If you want to look into the case and make up your own mind about what happened, I’d recommend it as a good place to start!

Lost in the Grand Canyon (Part One)

While researching this story (using the excellent book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers) I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on one specific detail: would drinking tadpole-infested water be bad for your health?

It’s difficult to find an answer to this one. There are some indications that drinking water with tadpoles in it might put you at higher risk for contracting tapeworm-like parasites. And there’s a lot of evidence that drin...

The Farmington Mine Disaster

While researching this story I came across a video which features an interview with two of the miners who survived the explosion. You can view it on Wikipedia here. It’s quite long, but it’s absolutely riveting.

Here’s a quote from one of the interviewees, Gary Martin. He speaks about receiving a delivery of coffee while awaiting rescue at the bottom of the a...

The Blood-Shooting Horned Lizard

As is often the case when I cover an unusual animal in a Short, the horned lizard is suffering from population decline. While they’re excellent at defending themselves against four-legged predators, they haven’t yet developed a defence against the kind of habitat change or destruction that’s often caused by humans. Sometimes a faceful of foul-tasting eyeblood just isn’t enough, it seems!

The Chase Train Collision

In this video, I mention that one of the cars making up the Colonial was older than the others. This was, in fact, a “heritage” car – something that was a feature of some Amtrak train services until as recently as 2019.

Amtrak’s heritage fleet consisted of cars that it inherited when it took over passenger rail service from commercial railroads in the 1970s. It selected the bes...

United Airlines Flight 811

In the video I mention that, when this accident took place, Captain David Cronin was just about to retire. I was curious about what happened to him after Flight 811, and so did a little digging to see where he ended up.

He did indeed retire shortly after the disastrous flight, but his performance during the emergency had been so good that it lead the Federal Aviation Administration to consider raising the mandatory retirement age. After much consideration, they finally did so in 2007. 2023-10-10 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

The Rockwood and Company Chocolate Flood

One of the sources I used for this story was this newspaper extract from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It’s well worth a read… especially as it also includes another story of a similarly bizarre nature. Under the header of “Boy Brings Home Bomb” it tells the story of a 14-year-old who proudly presented his family with a live grenade he’d found on the street. Kids g...

The 2003 Northeast Blackout

There are so many unique stories from this event that I didn’t have space for in the main video. Here are just three (somewhat lighter) stories that I really enjoyed. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more in the comments of the video!

First, there’s this Eyewitness News Report from ABC7NY, which features an account of the blackout. The crew were filming a fairly run-of-the-mill story when the...

Deadly Coincidence: The Elizabeth Plane Crashes

There’s one interesting tangent to this story that I wasn’t able to find space for in the video – the crashes form the background for an award-nominated work of fiction by author Judy Blume. Judy Blume normally writes for children, but her 2015 novel In The Unlikely Event was aimed at adults, and prominently features the three crashes that struck Elizabeth in 1951 and 1952.

There’s good reason for this. Blume herself grew up in Elizabeth. Her father was a dentist, and h...

The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy

The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy is credited with inspiring a contemporary horror film. Robert Eggers – producer and director of The Lighthouse (2019) lists the tale as one of the influences that helped him bring the film to life. If you’ve watched the film you’ll know that the plot contains a lot more murder and madness than there is to be found in the history of the Smalls Lighthouse… but it’s still easy to see how this strange tragedy would have been an influence!

The Doodlebug Disaster

Doodlebugs have pretty much disappeared from our railways now, apart from a few that are maintained for heritage purposes. There are still diesel-powered engines in use in some countries, but they’re generally not referred to as doodlebugs. As such it’s safe to say that the doodlebug, as a means of transportation, is consigned to history.

It so happens that the gasoline-powered train isn’t the only unusual means of transportation known as a “doodlebug” that has been lost. The ...

Drowned in Ale: The London Beer Flood

I’ve now covered three different unusual floods – the other two I have in mind are the Boston Molasses Flood and the Dublin Whiskey Flood/Fire. As I was researching this one, it occurred to me to have a look and see if there were any more non-water floods that I wasn’t aware of.

As it turns out, this kind of thing h...

The Sólheimasandur Plane Wreck

The wreck of the plane is certainly very Instagram-friendly… and, like many famous Instagrammable landmarks, it’s a bit of a contentious subject. People are often seen climbing (or even skateboarding) on the wreckage – something that is causing it irreparable damage. Although, of course, it’s a wreck to begin with, and something that’s not part of the natural landscape… a natural landscape that tho...

The Gotthard Tunnel Fire

In this video I briefly mention the Gotthard Base Tunnel – the most recently-constructed tunnel to pass under the Gotthard Massif mountain range. What I didn’t mention is that this impressive feat of civil engineering also had a very impressive opening ceremony.

Here’s a video of part of it. 

I think this opening ceremony got a lot of negative coverage in the press – perhaps because it...

The Story of Elmer McCurdy

I mention that McCurdy was a rather incompetent bank robber… but it’s worth emphasising just how incompetent he was. As well as blowing up safes (rather than blowing the doors off), his final heist saw him board the wrong train. Rather than getting away with £400,000 in cash, McCurdy left with just over $40… and a couple of demijohns of whisky. These he drank, and was probably still hungover when he was tracked down by law enforcement the next day and shot dead in an ...

The Donora Death Smog

Locals were complaining about the pollution from the mills for many years before and after the deadly smog. Here’s an extract from one letter penned by a woman named Lois Bainbridge (a resident of the nearby town of Webster) on the last day of the Donora smog.

"I would not want men to lose their jobs, but your life is more precious than your...

2023-08-29 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post