The congregation of St. Mark's Lutheran church in New York City's Little Germany had been waiting for the Sunday school picnic excursion all year. Mothers dressed their kids in their best clothes and packed up good food in baskets to bring with them on the trip up the East River and out to Long Island. On June 15th, 1904, thirteen hundred people would be aboard the General Slocum as it left the pier near the Williamsburg Bridge. Within two hours, over a thousand of them would be dead.
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 40 min
You're at a midsummer evening party at a friend's beach house, enjoying a cocktail or two as the sun sets, when a loud noise draw everyone's gaze to the skies above the ocean. Something has exploded up above - a plane, raining down in fiery pieces on the water below. The sight is already terrifying enough until the whispers start. Did anyone else see something arcing up toward the plane before it blew up?
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 15 min
It was just supposed a late-night birthday party on the Thames - a little drinking, a little dancing, and a lot of fun with all their friends. But in the early morning hours of August 20th, 1989, the 131 people onboard the pleasure boat Marchioness found themselves at the mercy of a ship three times her size.
Jul 31, 2020•1 hr 23 min
It spewed smoke and ash that destroyed crops and killed livestock, and yet they stayed. It caused earthquakes that damaged buildings and mudslide which killed hundreds, and yet they stayed. It sent insects and venomous snakes fleeing down into the town, and yet the people of Saint Pierre on the island of Martinique - or more specifically, some of their political leaders - refused to listen to the wordless threats issued by Mount Pelee.
Jul 19, 2020•1 hr 35 min
It came out of nowhere, flowing in waves throughout the world during a time of great international upheaval. Some did what they could to fight it. Some were struck down, and tragically lost so quickly it was hard to believe they were gone. Some were careless about the whole thing, refusing to wear masks or continuing to gather together for parades and parties. But in the end, what mattered was the virus, and the damage it wrecked.
Jul 01, 2020•1 hr 43 min
The gathering was just a union meeting, the Black sharecroppers of Phillips County, Arkansas, banding together and trying to get a fair pay for their work in the cotton fields. But when the night ended in bloodshed, the county's white citizens thought it was something more. Then the posse formed, and all Hell broke loose.
Jun 19, 2020•1 hr 15 min
It should have just have been a rough-and-tumble overnight ride across the sea, enjoying a good beer or a meal as the waves crashed outside. But then, early in the morning of September 28th, 1994, a loud noise rattled through the ferry Estonia, and the countdown to the ship's quick death began.
May 16, 2020•1 hr 23 min
All of us are in the middle of trying to survive a disaster. Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed to do so twice in one week.
Apr 24, 2020•55 min
It all started when the sandstorm kicked up. Hours later when the winds died down, Marathon des Sables entrant Mauro Prosperi found himself alone in the Moroccan desert, unable to locate the rest of the runners. Nine days later, surprising everyone, he would be found alive.
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 15 min
Founded in 1824, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution provided the British Isles with a standing organization of trained volunteers ready and willing to save those in peril in the surrounding waters on a moment's notice.
Mar 06, 2020•50 min
The images were striking - the faint outline in the marshland of the Everglades where a DC-9 struck the ground, killing all 110 people on board. But what killed all those people within only minutes of takeoff from Miami?
Feb 29, 2020•50 min
You're working down in the mine several hundred feet below the surface when you start to smell smoke. It's growing thicker with every passing minute, and it's coming from between you and the only way out of the mine.
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr 36 min
In our first commercial disaster, it was supposed to be the first Tumblr convention, a safe place for fans to share their joy in things like Sherlock, Welcome to Night Vale, anime, and other interests. But what was supposed to be a good time ended up being a prolonged dumpster fire, complete with a bouncy house and a ball pit.
Feb 12, 2020•1 hr 6 min
It was the last night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival and people were eager to see country star Jason Aldean take the stage. Twenty-five minutes into his performance, he stepped up to the mike ... only to make a run for it off the stage. Soon, everyone else in the audience would be running for cover as well.
Jan 31, 2020•1 hr 22 min
It was one of the most respected ships on the sea, a luxurious way to travel from Canada to Europe. But one foggy night was all it would take to send the Empress of Ireland to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River in a mere fourteen minutes.
Jan 22, 2020•1 hr 11 min
Would the United States and the Soviet Union nuke each other out of existence? In the 1980s, no one could be sure. So in 1982, a little girl named Samantha Smith just went ahead and asked -- the leader of the Soviet Union, that is.
Jan 01, 2020•1 hr 15 min
In this final episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at how Pripyat has fared in the years since it was evacuated, among other things.
Dec 25, 2019•1 hr 2 min
In the penultimate episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at the investigation into the causes of the accident and the failures behind the scenes which led to the disaster.
Dec 20, 2019•56 min
The break is over and it's back to Chernobyl, where everything is covered with radioactive dust and the remains of reactor #4 are a continuing danger to everyone - both in the immediate vicinity, and quite possibly to all of those in western Europe.
Dec 13, 2019•1 hr 18 min
In this part of our Chernobyl series, we reach the moment of truth - the day when all of Chernobyl's underlying problems rose to the surface and led to the worst nuclear power disaster in history.
Nov 12, 2019•1 hr 19 min
In this episode, we see Chernobyl's beginnings, and just where cracks begin to form underneath the surface.
Nov 06, 2019•46 min
Before we get into the story of Chernobyl, we explore a few previous nuclear disasters, learn how radiation and nuclear accidents are measured, and find out just how sick ionizing radiation will make you.
Oct 31, 2019•1 hr 2 min
It's St. Valentine's Day weekend, and love is in the air. Young people throughout northern Dublin flocked to the Stardust in 1981, drawn by the promise of a disco dancing competition to start at one in the morning. But within an hour of people gathering around the dance floor to start the contest, all eight hundred people in the Stardust would be fighting for their lives against a deadly inferno.
Sep 27, 2019•1 hr 11 min
They were some of the best and the brightest in British football. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the Busby Babes were young talented players signed on to Manchester United F.C. by manager Matt Busby to mold into a winning side. And win they did, creeping ever closer to Busby's goal of the European Cup. But on February 6th, 1958, the crash which would come to be known as the Munich air disaster would break the hearts of Manchester United fans, Great Britain, and the sporting world at large.
Sep 19, 2019•1 hr 13 min
It was a normal working Saturday at the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey - until it wasn't. After the cotton bales on pier three caught fire so very close to barrels of oil and turpentine, every ship docked along the waterfront was under threat, and not all of them would make it out in one piece.
Aug 30, 2019•50 min
With World War II raging on throughout Europe, those civilians who were merely trying to survive in their day-to-day lives in southern Italy were on the brink of starvation. They needed food, and to find some they opted to hop a freight train to the countryside to barter for whatever they could find. On March 2nd, hundreds of people either boarded the no. 8017 train at Balvano station with legitimate tickets or snuck into one of the train's many freight cars. The vast majority of those onboard w...
Aug 01, 2019•42 min
Feeling hot this summer? It could be worse. In January of 1719 during the Great Northern War, six thousand troops from the Swedish army began what should have been a two-day walk back over the Norwegian border to their own empire, mentally and physically exhausted from a four-month-long losing battle. But then the snow came, and what was supposed to be a two-day hike turned into a week-long nightmare.
Jul 31, 2019•46 min
One country said it was a tragic mistake during wartime. One country claimed it was a deliberate and heartless act. But one thing was true - whether it was one or the other, the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 took the lives of 290 innocent people in July of 1988.
Jul 19, 2019•1 hr 13 min
It's time for the yearly school trip - no, not to Washington, DC, or the Grand Canyon or New Orleans. In 1986, as every year before it, the kids in the Basecamp program at Oregon Episcopal School participated in a special trip - a climb up Mount Hood in the Cascade mountain range. But when the group left the school late on the night of May 11th, 1986, to head to Mount Hood for the opportunity of a lifetime, they had no idea nine of them would not be coming back alive.
Jun 27, 2019•1 hr 7 min
It's 1942, and it's men in uniform and women in pretty dresses everywhere you go. Tonight's you're at the Cocoanut Grove, arguably the most popular supper club in Boston. The decor matches the name, with a tropical theme and fake palm trees surrounding a dance floor bracketed by Spanish-tiled eaves. You and your steady beau are all set up with drinks and ready to watch the floor show when there's a commotion from the direction of the stairs down to the basement Melody Lounge. Is it the fight it ...
Jun 18, 2019•1 hr 27 min
