Informações:
Sinopsis
A podcast about disasters throughout history - what caused them, how people survived, and how we've responded to keep those disasters from happening again.
Episodios
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Episode 51: The Shiloh Baptist Church stampede
06/10/2017 Duración: 44minWhen the woman cried out, what she said was, "Fight!" But what the congregation of Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, heard that Friday night in 1902 was, "Fire!" The panicked crowd rushed for the front door, and within ten minutes dozens would die - all because of a misheard word.
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Episode 50: LANSA Flight 508
30/09/2017 Duración: 44minImagine what you could do when you were seventeen. Would you have been able to handle surviving a plane crash in the middle of nowhere? Or would you have been able to get up after the crash and start walking toward where help will hopefully be, even if it meant walking for ten straight days? One teenage girl did just that, and became the sole survivor of a plane crash over the Peruvian jungle.
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Episode 49: The sinking of the MV Le Joola
28/09/2017 Duración: 01h02minFifteen years ago this week, one of the deadliest shipwrecks ever happened just off the coast of western Africa. The MV Le Joola was an integral part of life in Senegal. The ferry regularly traveled along the coastline between the capital of Dakar and the city of Ziguinchor in the southern Casamance region, an area nearly cut off from the rest of Senegal by an ongoing civil war, a lack of riches, and the obstruction that was the long thin strip of the Gambia. When it sank, it took over eighteen hundred people down with it.
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Episode 48: The Happy Land Social Club fire
21/09/2017 Duración: 52minIt started with an argument, the kind of argument you might see at any nightclub or bar on any given night. A man tried to get his ex-girlfriend to give him another chance. She told him no. Angry, he made a grab for her. One of the bouncers saw, and the man ended up kicked out on the street. But within a half an hour he'd return -- this time with a gallon jug of gasoline and a pair of matches.
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Episode 47: The 1947 Texas City Disaster
16/09/2017 Duración: 01h11minSomething was burning down by the Texas City waterfront on April 16, 1947. Everyone in the growing town built on the petrochemical industry could see the plumes of smoke billowing upward from whatever was on fire. There was just one strange thing -- the smoke was bright orange. The curious sight drew many people down to the north slip at the docks to what was going on, a site which would soon turn into the most dangerous spot they could be.
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Episode 46: The AIDS Epidemic, Part Two - Misinformation
04/09/2017 Duración: 26minIn part two of our AIDS epidemic series, we look at the misinformation and bigotry which negatively impacted the struggle to identify and fight the virus. This includes the misleading story of "Patient Zero," and the Reagan administration's highly problematic view of the disease from the very start.
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Episode 45: The Galveston Hurricane
29/08/2017 Duración: 57minThis weekend, Hurricane Harvey struck the east coast of Texas and flooded the city of Houston. A hundred and seventeen years ago this week, a similar storm was headed straight for the nearby city of Galveston, one of the richest cities in the country. What followed was a deadly disaster which surprised Galveston and left thousands dead in its wake.
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Episode 44: Air New Zealand Flight 901
17/08/2017 Duración: 55minWho wouldn't like to go on a sightseeing flight? Have a glass of champagne, mingle with your fellow sightseers, and peer down in wonder at the glorious sights below. But for Air New Zealand Flight 901, the November 28, 1979, flight wouldn't end with a cheery goodbye to Antarctica and a swift turnaround back to Auckland, but in a smoldering pile of wreckage on the slopes of Mount Erebus.
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Episode 43: The AIDS Epidemic, Part One - Origin
04/08/2017 Duración: 18minIn this short first entry in our series on the AIDS epidemic, we see the very beginnings of the AIDS virus -- not in the late 1970s, but in a jungle in Cameroon at the turn of the 20th century. We also look at a few early cases of HIV infection prior to the epidemic's explosion.
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Episode 42: The Bradford City stadium fire
27/07/2017 Duración: 01h04minMost of us have been to a sporting event at one time or another in our lives. In this day and age, we can spot the safety improvements which have been added the stadiums and arenas due to tragedies which struck in the past: fire doors with lit EXIT signs overhead; stadiums made of concrete, steel, and plastic rather than wood; sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers in multiple locations. One of the tragedies which led to more thorough precautions being taken in stadiums in Great Britain started with a dropped cigarette during a football match and ended with 56 dead.
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Episode 41: The Tri-State Tornado
17/07/2017 Duración: 01h05minIt's 1925 and you leave the house on a Wednesday morning three weeks before Easter ready to go to work delivering mail in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. While passing near a rural field in your horse and buggy, you see the telltale swirl of a newly formed tornado touching down. But what you and no one else in the Midwest know is that you just saw the birth of the deadliest tornado in American history.
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Episode 40: The World Series earthquake
26/06/2017 Duración: 01h25minThe San Francisco-Oakland area had baseball fever. Both of their teams -- the Giants and the Athletics respectively -- would go up against one another in Game Three of the "Battle of the Bay" World Series. People across the country tuned in at 5:00 PM local time to watch the pre-game with announcers Al Michaels and Tim McCarver. But four minutes later, the video and audio would both abruptly cut out. Then Al Michaels' voice could be heard saying something which shocked the audience: "Tell you what, I think we're having an earth--"
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Episode 39: The San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre
31/05/2017 Duración: 01h03minIt was always busy at the McDonald's restaurant on San Ysidro Boulevard. Kids invaded the play area whether or not they'd eaten in the restaurant, and for people arriving from the Tijuana border crossing only a mile south, the golden arches were like a welcome friends greeting them hello as they arrived in America. But on July 18, 1984, a stranger walked into the restaurant armed to the teeth, ready to finally end the battle in his mind.
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Episode 38: The 1918 Hammond circus train crash
28/05/2017 Duración: 01h16minYou're the engineer on an empty troop train in the middle of the night in 1918, headed west to pick up more soldiers meant to head off to the war in Europe. You've had little sleep but you've eaten well and taken some pills for your kidneys. Almost all of the rest of the crew are back in the caboose -- perhaps playing cards or sleeping, with no passengers to tend to. You are alone, and after a while the movement of the train rocks you right to sleep. So you don't see the circus train cars on the tracks in front of you, not until it's too late.
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Episode 37: Air Florida Flight 90 and the Washington Metro Train Collision
16/05/2017 Duración: 57minThey say God never gives you more than you can handle. On January 13, 1982, He sure as hell attempted to do so to the city of Washington, DC. Snow cascaded from the sky, making driving home from work to the suburbs a treacherous undertaking. At National Airport, an Air Florida flight with a crew inexperienced in flying under winter conditions waited impatiently for takeoff. And underneath the city, an improperly closed rail switch and a subway train packed to the gills would have a devastating introduction to one another.
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Episode 36: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961
08/05/2017 Duración: 01h03sThe harrowing video aired on a loop around the world -- a passenger airliner gliding down toward the sea near a tourist-filled beach, then tumbling over and over as it struck the water. What happened in Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 in the hours prior to its crash into the sea near the Comoros Islands required bravery, quick patience, and resourcefulness out of pilot Leul Abate -- and more than a little bit of luck. (My apologies for any audio issues. I had some microphone problems this week.)
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Episode 35: The Up Stairs Lounge fire
01/05/2017 Duración: 01h04minOn the last day of Pride in 1973, the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans felt like it always did. The Sunday beer bust was in full swing, patrons were discussing an upcoming charity event, and the gay bar repeatedly busted out their anthem, "United We Stand." When the downstairs buzzer rang, one of the regulars went to open the door to the stairwell to see who it was. It wasn't a person, though. It was an inferno.
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Episode 34: Centralia
13/04/2017 Duración: 01h22minThe name conjures up images of the bare skeleton of a ghost town, swallowed in smoke and haunted by the spirits of its past. But Centralia was once a normal small Pennsylvania town full of hard-working Americans who just wanted to live safely in their homes. The few who still live there still feel the same way.
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Episode 33: The Boston Molasses Flood
23/03/2017 Duración: 51minIt towered over Commercial Street in the North End of Boston, its massive form looming over the elevated train tracks and Engine #31 firehouse. It groaned loudly every time it was filled, its contents leaking in an absurd mockery of bleeding. It wordlessly threatened for years to collapse. Finally, on January 15, 1919, it spilled its contents onto the neighborhood -- 2.3 million gallons of molasses.
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Episode 32: The 2011 Norway attacks
06/03/2017 Duración: 01h06minHeavy rains soaked the Norwegian Labour Party's youth camp on Utøya that Friday in July of 2011. What might have otherwise been a miserable day was lightened by a visit from former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The campers -- all smart, capable, and eager to change the world -- could deal with a little rain if it meant meeting one of their idols. But after she left the island, they started to receive texts. A bomb had exploded in Oslo. As terrifying as it was, though, they all felt safe on Utøya.