Weirdest Disasters in History
Floods of molasses and beer, a lake that exhaled poison gas, a forest flattened from the sky. These are history's strangest disasters, with the real numbers and sources behind them.
The London Beer Flood (October 17, 1814)
On 17 October 1814 a huge vat at the Meux and Company brewery on Tottenham Court Road burst, setting off a chain reaction that released a flood of porter, . Read the full story
The Year Without a Summer (June 6, 1816)
After the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April 1815, ash and sulphur in the atmosphere cooled the planet. Read the full story
The Great Stink (1858)
In the hot summer of 1858 the River Thames, filled with London's raw sewage, smelled so bad that Parliament considered moving out, and the curtains of the . Read the full story
The Peshtigo Fire (October 8, 1871)
On the night of 8 October 1871, a firestorm tore through the drought-dry forests of northeastern Wisconsin, wiping out the lumber town of Peshtigo and near. Read the full story
The Johnstown Flood (May 31, 1889)
Above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the poorly maintained South Fork Dam held back a private lake used by a fishing and hunting club for wealthy Pittsburgh fami. Read the full story
The Tunguska Event (June 30, 1908)
On 30 June 1908 something exploded in the sky over remote Siberia and flattened about 2,150 square kilometres of forest. No crater was ever found. Here's what scientists now think happened at Tunguska. Read the full story
The Halifax Explosion (December 6, 1917)
On 6 December 1917 the munitions ship Mont-Blanc exploded in Halifax Harbour after colliding with the Imo, killing about 1,800 people and injuring roughly 9,000 in the largest human-made blast before nuclear weapons. Read the full story
The Great Molasses Flood (January 15, 1919)
The full story of Boston's 1919 Great Molasses Flood: why a giant tank burst, how a wave of syrup killed 21 people, and what science later explained. Read the full story
The Lake Nyos Disaster (August 21, 1986)
On the night of 21 August 1986 Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a huge cloud of carbon dioxide that flowed into the valleys below and killed about 1,700 people and thousands of cattle. Read the full story
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