35 Facts About Terrifying Disasters Humans Have Witnessed

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26Benxihu Colliery

Benxihu Colliery

The worst mining disaster in history, killing 1,549 miners, happened in 1942 in the Benxihu Colliery when Japanese administrators of a mine using forced labor in China cut off the ventilation, trapping 1,518 Chinese laborers and 31 Japanese administrators to die of burns or suffocate.


27. The MV Doña Paz was a Philippine-registered passenger ferry that sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on December 20, 1987. With an estimated death toll of 4,386 people and only 24 survivors, it was the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history.


28. The biggest maritime disaster is believed to be the sinking of MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. An estimated 9,400 out of 10,500 of the passengers perished after the ship was hit by three Soviet torpedoes. This death toll is six times greater than the famous Titanic disaster.


29. In 1976, SS Sansinena, a Liberian oil tanker in Los Angeles harbor exploded suddenly, killing 9 and injuring 46 people. It shattered windows for miles around. Some people even thought it was an earthquake at first. The cause for the trigger to the explosion was never discovered.


30. During the 2003 Station Nightclub fire, a reporter filmed the entire fire from the moment before the pyrotechnics went off on the main stage. He was at the club doing a piece on nightclub safety.


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31Vajont dam

Vajont dam

In 1968, a landslide event at the Vajont Reservoir in Italy created a mega-tsunami which crested its dam, flooding the valley below. The resulting wave destroyed 5 villages and killed 2000 people. In 2008, UNESCO called the tragedy a "cautionary tale" of "the failure of engineers and geologists."


32. Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903 killed over 602 people. It gained a lot of attention as the victims were mainly women and children from an upper-middle-class background. The theatre had been falsely billed as “absolutely fireproof”, but lacked basic safety infrastructure.


33. In 1927, a fire started in the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal, Canada and killed 78 children. The city responded by banning children under 16 from cinemas which lasted until 1961.


34. "The Great Smog" of London, UK was a severe air pollution event that lasted 5 days and killed an estimated 12,000 people in December of 1952.


35. The worst elevator disaster in history happened on September 11, 2001 in NYC. Each tower had 99 elevators that either dropped on impact or were still trapped when the building collapsed, claiming 200 of the 2,977 lives lost that day.

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