fascinatinghorror

The Sinking of The Sultana

In the aftermath of this disaster, many survivors stayed in touch with one another. From 1885 onward, in fact, there were annual reunions, which would take place as close to the anniversary of the sinking as possible each year.

Over time, as survivors grew old and passed away, the number of people attending these reunions dwindled. In 1930 only one person attended. The last survivor died in 1941, having lived a full life.

You might think that would be the end of the reunions... bu...

The Carrollton Bus Crash

In this video I include a quote from Harold Dennis Junior, a survivor of the crash who spoke about his experiences in the documentary Impact After the Crash. The documentary is definitely worth watching if you want to learn more about this disaster.

The good news is that - although he was severely burned in the disaster - Harold has gone on to have a long and successful life. He's won several sporting...

The Story of Centralia

There's a lot to the story of Centralia - including many interesting details I couldn't find space for in the video. One of my favourite notes is that it served as inspiration for the makers of the 2006 horror film Silent Hill - which is based on one of my favourite video games ever.

It's also interesting to note that you can still visit the town. Many people do each year, and until...

The Summer Street Bridge Disaster

Something I often like to do when researching a disaster which took place on the streets of a city is to "visit" the location using Google Street View, and take a look around at what the place looks like today. It's surprising how often there are still visible remnants from times gone by.

Here's the location of the Summer Street Bridge over the the Fort Point Channel in Boston. If you take a virtual walk aroun...

The Late Late Breakfast Show Incident

In this video I mention The Dangerous Sports Club. This was an interesting organisation, to say the least. They really did pioneer bungee-jumping in the UK... but they didn't necessarily go about it in the most responsible way. In fact, the very first bungee jump they conducted was totally illegal and resulted in several arrests.

The best way to get an idea of the character of the Dangerous Sports Club is to take a look at 2021-10-19 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

The Italian Hall Disaster

While researching this video I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on disasters that have been caused by someone shouting "Fire" in a crowded place. Although I haven't done videos on them yet, here are two that really caught my attention.

One incident took place at the Surrey Garden Music Hall in London in 1856. A popular preacher was there to deliver a sermon to more than 10,000 people insid...

The R101: "Britain's Hindenburg"

Just a little side note for this video - I didn't plan at all to post it on the anniversary of the crash... that was something that happened completely by chance, and that I only noticed as I was finalising the video. What are the odds?

Other than that, if you'd like to know more about this disaster, I'd suggest the Airship Heritage Trust, who have an amazing collection of images an...

The Great Smog of 1952

Reading about this incident was a very strange experience. It happened long enough ago to feel like a part of history... and yet it's something that's within living memory for some of my friends and family.

I include a quote from someone who experienced the smog in the video, which I sourced from a piece by The Guardian. If you want to read a few more, you can find the whole thing 2021-09-28 10:16:00 +0000 UTC View Post

The Eastland Disaster

While the Eastland Disaster isn't that well-remembered by the wider world, there are many people who work extremely hard to ensure that it's not totally forgotten. Among the organisations who help to preserve the memory of what happened that day is the Eastland Disaster Historical Society.

Their website is excellent. Not only does it have a wealth of unique images, but also a lot of background information - way more t...

The MGM Grand Hotel Disaster

One of the most useful sources for researching this story was the official incident report, compiled by the Clark County Fire Department. Here it is as a PDF that you can read online or download.

It contains a great deal of detail about the events which took place that day, including an explanation of the exact way in...

The Guadalajara Disaster

One great source for this story was a Seconds from Disaster episode. In season one, episode eight of the show they covered the Guadalajara Explosions.

In case you're not familiar with Seconds from Disaster, it's a National Geographic show that recounts disasters from all over the world, usually with a minute-by-minute breakdown of events, intereviews with survivors, and recreations of w...

The Tenerife Airport Disaster

The chain of events which ended with this disaster began with a bomb inside a flower shop in the terminal of Gando airport. I mention this in the video, but don't go into too much detail... but the story of the bomb is quite an interesting one, so I thought I'd tell it here.

The explosive device (which, thankfully, didn't kill anyone when it detonated), was placed by an organisation called the Canary Islands Independence Movement - a terrorist group who had carried out at least one othe...

The Zolitūde Shopping Centre Collapse

There's always more to a disaster than I can fit in an episode, but with this disaster that was especially true. In fact, it's something that I might even revisit at a later date, as there's a whole other story to be told about how the rescue and investigation was handled.

For the time being, here's the official report (scroll down to find a version in English). It contains an absolute wealth of detail - not ...

The Cairngorm Plateau Disaster

In this video I mention just how badly extremes of cold can affect the human body. It's something which I think isn't always understood. Cold can be devastating, and it can cause people to deteriorate way faster than you might think.

This article, for example, talks about how hiker...

The Story Of The Radium Girls

A lot has been written about the radium girls and their fight for justice, which meant that I had a lot of sources to draw on for this video. Here are a couple that I'd particularly recommend.

First is the film Radium Girls. Like many films of its type, it does dramatise events somewhat, but it's also really good for getting an insight into what it would have been like for the workers, and for learn...

The Cleveland Clinic X-Ray Incident

In this video, I talk about the x-ray film used in hospitals in the early 1900s. For quite some time, the same volatile film was used for movie production, with some disastrous results. For example, a particularly hot summer was enough to cause a film archive in New Jersey to go up in smoke, destroying every film made by Fox before the year 1937.

Almost every major studio suffered a similar fire at some ...

Stories From Pearl Harbor

Because Pearl Harbor was such an important historical event, there was plenty of Public Domain imagery and footage for me to use in this video - so much, in fact, that I could barely fit it all in.

If you want to get more of an idea of just how intensely chaotic the day itself was, here are some other videos I'd recommend watching.

Here's an original news reel, uploaded to YouTube. 2021-07-27 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

The Scandinavian Star Disaster

Whenever I'm researching an incident like this, the best possible source is almost always the official government report. In this case, I was incredibly fortunate to find that the report had been translated into English.

In case you'd like to look it over, here's a link to the report as a PDF. It tells the story of the incident in a level of te...

The Enschede Fireworks Incident

This video brought to mind two general safety principles that I'd heard of before... neither of which were applied in this incident.

The first can be remembered with the acronym BANANA, which here stands for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. If you're building a chemical plant, factory, or any other thing which is home to industrial processes, I can't help but agree!

The other is a piece of advice about cordons. When deciding how far back to set a s...

The Hammond Circus Train Wreck

Often in my videos I talk about what has been changed since the incident to stop it from happening again. And, sure enough, the control systems of trains have changed a great deal since 1918. I didn't include that in this video, as few of the changes could be directly attributed to this incident... but I thought you'd find the systems we have nowadays interesting nonetheless.

For a while, trains were equipped with a "dead man's switch" in the form of a pedal which the driver ha...

The Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Two things about this story stood out to me while researching, but I couldn't quite find a place for them in the video.

First, is that - like several other disasters I've covered - this one had a song written about it. Gordon Lightfoot wrote and recorded "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in 1976, just a year after the disaster. Here's a copy of it you can listen to on YouTube.

Second is a story ...

The Yellowstone Hot Springs

I've visited Yellowstone twice in my life, and both times was struck by the beauty and strangeness of the place. If you've never been... well, there's no other part of America quite like it.

Fortunately, during both visits, everyone around me was sensible and safe. But there was one incident which was a little bit tense. After visiting one thermal area, me and my friends headed back to the car park along a marked path... only to find a very calm and very immovable bison standing directl...

The Algo Centre Mall Collapse

In this video I mention that the Elliot Lake Library was situated inside the Algo Centre Mall. After the collapse, the library moved, ending up as a tenant in the replacement mall, Pearson Plaza. 

In an interesting epilogue to this story, it appears that the library has had to close at least once due to leaks in the roof. Although they're fairly sure that...

The Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour Disaster

I often make use of The Wayback Machine when researching incidents - its record of old websites is second to none. It was especially useful here, as it allowed me to access archived versions of the Farrell's website.

Here's a link to The Wayback Machine versions of the site. There's a whole bunch of snapshots taken a...

The Hartford Circus Fire

Although the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were able to carry on after the disaster in this week's episode, they recently put on their final ever performance. 

It was a very different show from the one people would have attended in 1944. The props and set were relatively high-tech, and there were no performing animals involved (the last elephants had been sent to a sanctuary just a few years before).

The decision to end the 146-year run of the circus was do...

The Niagara Falls Ice Bridge Disaster

For a disaster that took place more than 100 years ago, the collapse of the Niagra Falls ice bridge is actually very well-documented... which made this an easy video to research! It's not often there are so many details available about something which happened so long ago.

One source I really wanted to share is this one. It tells the story in a very evocative way, using extracts taken from the new...

The Summerland Disaster

In this video I show a quote from a survivor of the disaster, Ruth McQuillan-Wilson. She's gone on to write a book about Summerland and the fire, which I highly recommend reading. She's also published a letter in a local paper appealing to the three boys who started the fire to come forward and speak to her.

It's strange to think that the people who started the fire are still alive today. Of cours...

A Brief History of Multi-Vehicle Collisions

When I started researching this topic I was absolutely stunned by how many massive multi-vehicle pileups there have been. They're very rare in the UK (where I live), but on some roads in some countries there's at least one chain-reaction mass-collision each year.

Because of rights issues, I wasn't able to include any footage... but I did come across several videos which people caught up in a multi-vehicle collision have captured, and which demonstrate just how strange and terrifying the...

The Iroquois Theater Disaster

This has to be one of the most frequently-requested disasters I've ever covered. It's certainly one that remains a huge presence in Chicago's history, and which had a lasting impact on the world of today. Perhaps because of that, it's very well-documented, and so it was quite easy to research.

There's one source in particular that I wanted to share with you. This website is a labour of love by someone who helped to ...

Windscale: The Story of Britain's Chernobyl

One fact which I couldn't quite fit into this video, but which absolutely astonished me: Sellafield, until 2008, had a Visitors' Centre. The attraction consisted mainly of a museum with interactive exhibits, which was a favourite day out for schools and families in the local area.

At the Centre, you could challenge Albert Einstein in an interactive quiz, or learn about the recycling of spent nuclear fuel from a mascot known as "the Mighty Atom" who rode around above the heads of guests ...