History's A Disaster
Bloody history and bloodier crimes. Andrew takes a weekly look at all things bloody. From natural disasters to man made atrocities
Episodes
A headlining tour, a hit record, and a tired airplane came together over Mississippi—and the result reshaped rock history. We trace Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1977 crash from the first red flags to the last radio call, clarifying what went wrong and why the loss was avoidable. The story starts with a band at full speed after releasing Street Survivors, then zooms into the logistics that carried the risk: a 1948 Convair 240 with...
A silent ship in open water, a missing crew, and a century of wild theories—this is the story that made “ghost ship” part of our vocabulary. We pull the lens wide, starting with the Mary Celeste’s earlier life as the Amazon, a fast, carvel-built brigantine whose career seemed shadowed by bad luck: a captain’s sudden death, collisions, a grounding, and a salvage. When Benjamin Briggs steps aboard as owner-captain, he b...
Two scenic helicopters crossed paths over the Gold Coast and collided in clear daylight, exposing weak links in see-and-avoid, radio reliability, and ground procedures. We trace the timeline, the emergency response, and the investigation, then lay out practical fixes for safer sightseeing flights.
• operator expansion without matched safety assessment
• aircraft, pilot backgrounds, and flight setup
• ...
A perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning turned into a wall of white and the worst commute of many people’s lives. We dive into the 99-car pileup on I-75 near Calhoun, Tennessee—how a fog-prone valley, river-backed reservoirs, and nearby industrial ponds set the stage for sudden zero visibility, and how human reactions at different speeds amplified a single impact into a chain of catastrophe. It’s a forensic tour through ...
A winter storm, rushed decisions, and weak training collided as Air Florida Flight 90 lifted into bad data and iced wings, then fell into the Potomac. We trace the chain of errors, the rescue that followed, and the reforms that reshaped winter flying.
• deregulation pressures and rapid growth at Air Florida
• crew backgrounds and cockpit culture under stress
• storm delays, flawed de‑icing, and hold...
Joy filled a crowded Jerusalem wedding until the third-floor dance hall collapsed, triggering a deadly progressive failure that exposed years of shortcuts and ignored warnings. We trace the engineering decisions, the human stories, and the slow path to accountability and reform.
• PAL-KAL method and rapid-build culture
• design change from roof to occupied floor
• added then removed supports and load ...
A winter crossing turned deadly when Alfred Packer led five men into the San Juans against Chief Ouray’s warning, then returned alone with shifting stories and other men’s gear. We trace the confessions, the trials, and the forensics that still complicate his guilt.
• Packer’s troubled past and failed careers
• The mining party’s formation and dire route choice
• Chief Ouray’s warning and the fatal de...
The dawn over Luxor promises gold on stone and quiet air over the Nile—until one failed part turns awe into catastrophe. We unpack the 2013 hot air balloon crash from the ground up: how balloon flight really works, why landing is the most perilous phase, and how a single aging fuel line set off a chain reaction that no one could stop. With an eye for both human detail and hard mechanics, we follow the timeline from de...
Blue flames raced down Dublin’s streets as thousands of gallons of whiskey burst from a burning warehouse and turned the Liberties into a flowing inferno. We take you straight into the 1875 Dublin Whiskey Fire—how casks exploded, why water made everything worse, and the moment a fire chief chose manure, ash, and tannery waste to smother an alcohol-fed blaze. It’s a wild story with sharp lessons on urban risk, crowd be...
A midnight circus run. A hot axle on a curve. An empty troop train racing through signals toward a sleeping engineer. Before dawn near Ivanhoe, Indiana, steel met wood, kerosene met sparks, and one of America’s worst rail disasters turned a rolling home into a furnace. We walk through the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train crash of 1918 step by step—how the show moved by rail, why old wooden cars and open-flame lighting c...
A routine moon mission that no one was watching turned into the most gripping survival story in spaceflight. We open on the quiet confidence of Apollo-era repetition, then snap into crisis as a routine cryogenic stir triggers an explosion that cripples the spacecraft and forces a complete rewrite of the plan. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise retreat into the lunar module—built for two days on the Moon—and turn...
A stuck valve. A wall of alarms. A company line that insisted everything was “fine.” We walk through the morning when Three Mile Island went from a routine shutdown to America’s most defining nuclear scare—and why the fallout was as much about trust as technology.
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On a foggy March day in 1977, the tiny Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife in the Canary Islands became an unintended host to multiple diverted jumbo jets after a terrorist bombing closed their intended destination. Among them were two Boeing 747s: KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736. What happened next would claim 583 lives and revolutionize aviation safety forever.
The KLM aircraft was piloted by Captain Jaco...
The thunderous crash of collapsing floors, desperate screams rising from beneath rubble, and the horrifying spread of flames that turned rescue into tragedy – these are the sounds and sights of the Pemberton Mill Collapse, one of America's deadliest industrial disasters that has somehow faded from our collective memory.
Against the backdrop of the booming American Industrial Revolution, the Pemberton tex...
A shocking triple homicide shatters the peaceful facade of small-town Windsor, North Carolina, leaving a community forever changed and a killer who vanished without a trace.
When people talk about small towns where everyone knows everyone and doors remain unlocked, they're talking about places like Windsor. With just 2,000 residents in 1993, this tight-knit community believed they knew all the faces that...
A company picnic that ended in catastrophe. A passenger ship that should never have sailed. 844 lives lost just 20 feet from shore.
The SS Eastland disaster remains one of America's deadliest maritime tragedies, yet has been largely forgotten by history. On that fateful July morning in 1915, thousands of Western Electric employees and their families boarded what was known as the "Speed Queen of the ...
The sky was clear on May 25, 1979, as American Airlines Flight 191 accelerated down the runway at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Seconds after liftoff, the unthinkable happened—the left engine tore free from the wing, flipping over the top before crashing onto the runway. What followed was a desperate 31-second battle as the pilots fought to control an aircraft that was rapidly becoming uncontrollable.
T...
A free jump from a historic World War II bomber—what skydiver could resist? But when eighteen experienced skydivers plunged through thick cloud cover on August 27, 1967, they faced a horrifying realization. Instead of the expected Ohio airfield below, they broke through to find themselves over the frigid waters of Lake Erie, miles from shore with just minutes before impact.
The Lake Erie skydiving disaster hi...
On July 18, 1984, a sleepy border community in Southern California became the site of unimaginable horror when 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty walked into a McDonald's restaurant and unleashed what would become the deadliest mass shooting in California history.
The San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre claimed the lives of 22 innocent people and left 19 others wounded during a 77-minute rampage that forev...
Sixty-three excited teenagers and four adult chaperones boarded a church bus on a sunny May morning in 1988, anticipating a day of roller coasters and fun at Kings Island Theme Park. No one suspected their joyful outing would become the deadliest drunk driving accident in American history—and reveal fatal flaws in school bus design that would transform transportation safety forever.
The collision itself wasn&...
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