Disaster Area

You don't expect a lake to just explode. But in 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon did exactly that on a hot August night, sending a jet of water skyward. The water wasn't the problem, however. The real prob...

29 Okt 201754min

On a hot summer night in 2015, a water park near Taipei hosted a party which drew thousands looking for a good time. But the party included an added ingredient which threatened the lives of hundreds o...

25 Okt 201745min

On September 1, 2004, hundreds of students of all ages arrived with their families at School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, Russia for the start of the school year. The first day of school was...

21 Okt 20171h 27min

When 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 t...

6 Okt 201744min

Imagine 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 ...

30 Sep 201744min

Fifteen 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 a...

28 Sep 20171h 2min

It 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 ...

21 Sep 201752min

Something 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...

16 Sep 20171h 11min