Dark History

The Hose That Didn't Fit

On June 15, 1904, the steamboat General Slocum caught fire in New York's East River during a church picnic outing, killing an estimated 1,021 of the 1,358 passengers — mostly German immigrant women and children from the Little Germany neighborhood — after Captain William Van Schaick ran the boat aground at North Brother Island.

Texas City, 1947

The Drunk Baker Who Beat the Titanic

The Town That Lost Its Fathers

The British Bang

The Year Without A Summer

Locked In

The Forgotten Titanic

The Fire America Forgot

The Boy Who Survived for a Day

The Village That Lost Its Children

The Port Chicago Disaster

The Crime of the Century

The Locked Doors of Triangle

The Cleveland Gas Inferno

The Cherry Mine Fire

The Bath School Disaster

Four Hours

The Millionaires' Dam

All Saints' Day

The Texas City Disaster

Absolutely Fireproof

The Halifax Explosion

The Beer Tsunami

The Sailors Who Got There First

The Hartford Circus Fire

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 killed 21 people when a tank containing 2.3 million gallons burst in Boston

The Dancing Plague of 1518 saw hundreds of people dance themselves to death in Strasbourg over several months

The Bone Wars of the 1870s saw rival paleontologists dynamiting fossil sites to prevent competitors from finding dinosaurs

The London Bridge that was sold to Arizona in 1968 was actually the wrong bridge - the buyer thought he was getting Tower Bridge

In 1518, hundreds of people in Strasbourg danced themselves to death in a plague that lasted for months, with some dancing for days without stopping.

In 1919, Boston was flooded with 2.3 million gallons of molasses moving at 35 mph, killing 21 people in what became known as the Great Molasses Flood.

During the 1904 Olympics, marathon runners were given brandy and strychnine as performance enhancers, and one athlete nearly died from rat poison.

In 1932, Australia declared war on emus and lost after the birds destroyed crops and evaded machine gun fire for weeks.