1. Description
This week, we look at the biggest nonnatural disasters in American history—shipwrecks, fires, industrial accidents—it’s all here. And no such list would be complete without a mass murder, so Jim Jones makes an appearance. Also, if we had to choose among all of these disasters, which one would we pick to make our final exit?
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3. Additional Resources
4. Merchandise/Support the Show
5. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
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6. Credits
1. Description
This week, we look at the biggest nonnatural disasters in American history—shipwrecks, fires, industrial accidents—it’s all here. And no such list would be complete without a mass murder, so Jim Jones makes an appearance. Also, if we had to choose among all of these disasters, which one would we pick to make our final exit?
2. Topics
3. Additional Resources
4. Merchandise/Support the Show
5. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
6. Credits
[00:00:00] Jeff: This week, five shipwrecks, two fires, two industrial accidents, and one mass murder. Welcome to Subpar Talks.
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Subpar Talks, where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff.
[00:00:33] Chris: And I'm Chris.
[00:00:35] Jeff: Thank you again for joining us for this next episode. This is episode four. If you have not done so, make sure you listen to last week's episode. Uh, we had a couple of wild court cases for you, an exploding stomach, a fat and hairy hand. Uh, listen to that and get all the details. I was thinking about it. So, in one instance, the doctor saved somebody's life. And in the other instance, the doctor kind of messed somebody's life up.
[00:01:05] Chris: Messed it up pretty bad.
[00:01:07] Jeff: Yeah. As a fat, hairy hand would, would tend to do to your life. So anyway, go back and listen to that. We think you'll enjoy it. As a quick reminder, we have some bloopers up from episode one. We think you'll enjoy that. Believe it or not, we are not flawless. We do make mistakes and we wanted to prove it to you. So there's about five minutes worth of bloopers there. We think you'll get a kick out of that. If you haven't done so, go back and listen to episode zero. That's where we give just a little bit of background on us and the show, kind of what you can expect on a week to week basis. And other than that, I think we are ready to go.
Let me give our usual disclaimer, our tagline for this podcast is conversations about everything. So there's really nothing off the table. So we talk a lot about, uh, or have a lot of topics here on this show. And some of those are gonna be touchy subjects, hot button issues. But we inject humor into this stuff. And so if you don't think that those two things can coincide, touchy subjects and humor, then maybe this podcast is not for you and that's OK, to each his or her own.
So if that is your kind of thing, here we go
Today, we are talking about the biggest non-natural disasters in US history. So, here's Chris to tell us what a natural disaster is so we can distinguish non-natural disasters. To put you on the spot.
[00:02:44] Chris: So a natural disaster would be, natural! Anything occurring in nature. That's gonna be your hurricanes, your earthquakes, your volcanic eruptions, you know, tornadoes, all that kind of good stuff. Floods.
[00:03:01] Jeff: There you go. OK. So these are natural disaster non-natural disasters where something out of the ordinary has happened. So these are not weather events. They might be weather related, but they are not weather events, not like a hurricane, tornado, or whatever. So I can tell you, for instance, something malfunctioned and killed a bunch of people or somebody fucked something up and it ended up killing a bunch of people or whatever.
OK. So I have to qualify this because non-natural disasters can include acts of war. So. I weeded out those because that would end up being a lot of the list and war is pretty depressing. So I didn't wanna, wanna just fill up the list with that stuff. So for example, 9/11 is not on here. So, uh, nothing like that.
Pearl Harbor, not on here. I also excluded diseases and pandemics. So the AIDS epidemic has killed, I don't remember what it is, like 600,000 Americans. COVID we're now over a million dead Americans from that. So...
[00:04:20] Chris: I think people have had enough with pandemics.
[00:04:22] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And I think people are pretty tired of hearing about COVID. So these are non-natural disasters that, that occurred in the US or in US territory, somewhere in the world. Um, or where a sizable number of Americans were killed. OK. So that's kind of the parameters here for, uh, for what this involved. And I figured, um, the way we would do this is to just do a Top 10 list and we'll move from 10 all the way down to 1.
And these are ranked by death toll. So how many people died in these non-natural disasters in American history? Are we ready?
[00:05:10] Chris: I'm ready.
[00:05:12] Jeff: All right, let's do it. Uh, first we're going all the way back to 1857. So this involved a ship called the SS Central America. It was also known as the Gold Ship or the Ship of Gold. Um, I'll tell you why in a second, but it operated between Central America and the East Coast. So it would make regular, uh, routes from Central America to the east coast of the US, and it was a passenger ship, but it also carried gold on a regular basis from people who had found gold in California. And this is the way, a lot of times, that they would get their gold back to wherever in the United States, most typically on the east coast.
And I was wondering why they would go that circuitous route, you know, Central America from California, then all the way to the east coast of the US. And the only thing I can figure, chime in if you have another theory on this, but I would think it would be pretty risky to just take your gold from California and then just try to trek across the United States because who knows what in the hell's gonna happen. And if somebody knows you have gold, then you're fucked, probably.
[00:06:29] Chris: That's true. Talking about mid-1800s. Things weren't so great.
[00:06:34] Jeff: Yeah, and I don't think they had built the, uh, transcontinental railroad yet. I don't think that was completed, until I wanna say like the 1860s.
[00:06:44] Chris: Sixties or seventies. Yeah.
[00:06:46] Jeff: Yeah. That, yeah. So I don't think there was even a really good way to get it across the land, so they would take it by ship. OK. So on September 3rd, 1857, this ship was sailing from Panama to New York City. It had 577 passengers along with 10 tons of gold. So this has a shitload of gold on it, uh, worth about $770 million today. So this is a, yeah, this is a ton of gold.
[00:07:18] Chris: Where are the pirates?
[00:07:20] Jeff: Yeah, no kidding. I thought about that. So they were off the coast of the Carolinas and they got caught up in a hurricane. So this really prevented them from moving at the speed they wanted to, and the steam pressure, this was a steam ship, the steam pressure dropped. And so they lost all power. So they're just drifting helplessly out at sea, uh, in the middle of a hurricane. They flew their flag upside down, but who the hell is gonna be around them to even know what's going on? There's a hurricane. Why are you in the ocean? Like, get out. So nobody was there. And so eventually some boats found them, some people were rescued, but the winds were just too strong. And by the time the storm had passed, most of the passengers and crew had already drowned. This killed 457 people. So that's enough to get it in the top 10 spot on this list, but there's an interesting legal twist to this at the end. So, in 1988, there's an expedition led by a guy named Tommy Thompson.
Which your first and last name should never be similar in my opinion, that's way too close. Tommy Thompson. But anyway, this guy's leading an expedition and they found a bunch of, uh, gold from this shipwreck.
[00:08:43] Chris: Really?
[00:08:44] Jeff: Totaled. Yeah. So in 1988, it totaled around 150 million dollars. Uh, obviously that would be more today. But anyway, when people found out that this expedition had found this gold, 39 insurance companies filed suit in federal court, because these insurance companies had paid out proceeds after the shipwreck.
They're like, they ensure the gold and the gold's gone through nobody's fault. So you gotta pay up. So now these insurance companies want their money back. So there was a massive lawsuit. The jury ended up awarding the expedition team, I don't know how they arrived at this figure, but 92% of the gold. So the insurance companies largely didn't get what they wanted.
[00:09:33] Chris: That's an amazing percentage.
[00:09:35] Jeff: Isn't it? Like, it really surprises me.
[00:09:37] Chris: So the whole purpose of the expedition was looking for the gold?
[00:09:42] Jeff: I think to just see what they could get from the shipwreck. But yeah, I think the gold was the motivating factor. Yeah.
[00:09:48] Chris: Huh.
[00:09:49] Jeff: So this guy, Tommy Thompson, evidently he had investors. That was how he funded his expedition and he didn't pay up. Uh, he did not give the investors back what he owed them. So they sued him. He went on the run and he was missing for at least a few years, but the US Marshalls found him finally in Florida. They extradited him to Ohio. He had a massive judgment against him. I don't remember what it was. It was millions of dollars. He actually served time in jail for contempt, but I found that fascinating, a shipwreck in the 1850s and then were fighting over it in the 1980s.
[00:10:32] Chris: I really can't believe the insurance companies weren't able to recover more than that.
[00:10:37] Jeff: I can't either.
OK. So that was number 10. And that is not the last time we will hear of a shipwreck on this list. I can guarantee you that. Have you ever heard of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster?
[00:10:54] Chris: No
[00:10:56] Jeff: Me neither, till I started looking into this. Uh, this was something that happened in West Virginia, so it's, not gonna be good.
Sorry, West Virginians, but it's not. In 1927, so can you imagine what life is like in 1927 in West Virginia?
[00:11:15] Chris: Pretty rough.
[00:11:16] Jeff: Yeah, it's rough. That was the, the word that came to my mind. It is rough. All right. So this involves the Union Carbide Company. They are a chemical company. They are still around, uh, unbelievably after what you're gonna hear about, but they are still a thing.
So they were in charge of building a tunnel. It was part of a hydroelectric project. And so they put out notice that, hey, you need a job, we've got work for you to do so come and work. And so you had people in West Virginia, a poor state, uh, people need money, so they hear that this company's hiring. So they had tons of people show up to work.
And as you would expect, these were horrible conditions to work in. These people were working 10 to 15 hour shifts. They were drilling into the sandstone. They were using dynamite and they were not given any, uh, given any masks or any breathing equipment at all. Um, the managers would come around and periodically inspect their progress. And the managers always had masks on, but the workers were not given masks, even when they asked for masks, nothing to protect them. So a lot of the workers died of silicosis. I think I'm saying that right. It is, uh, it's a lung disease, but it comes from all the shit in the air from breaking up sandstone.
[00:12:45] Chris: Sandstone, yeah. I was just thinking, any of that stuff. I mean, the grit that, that's gotta be horrible going in your lungs.
[00:12:53] Jeff: Yeah. So I figured, OK. That's probably gonna make you really sick and it'll eventually kill you, maybe like black lung disease.
[00:13:04] Chris: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Jeff: But evidently this comes on a lot quicker and a lot of those workers died within the year.
[00:13:11] Chris: Oh wow.
[00:13:11] Jeff: Of silicosis. Yeah. This is one of the biggest industrial accidents in US history. There was a huge congressional investigation. They had workers testify before Congress. A lot of the workers testified that they were forced to work at gunpoint. Uh, they were claiming, you know, they were telling their bosses, I'm sick. I can't work. Uh, and of course they had camps there for the workers to live in. I don't know what condition the camps were, but, or what they were in, but I imagine they were pretty poor conditions. But if they wouldn't get outta bed, the workers testified they would hold a gun on 'em and tell 'em you're going to work.
[00:13:49] Chris: Well, shit. Did we have OSHA then? Where were they?
[00:13:53] Jeff: I don't, I don't think OSHA had come about. Not yet.
[00:13:56] Chris: Probably not. Well, that may be the reason that they are.
[00:14:00] Jeff: Absolutely, with shit like this.
[00:14:02] Chris: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Jeff: Uh, I think they probably came about in the 30s. But anyway, this killed 476 people. Pretty sad thing for a lot of this stuff we're gonna talk about. There are memorials that have been put up, monuments, uh, and I think there's one there. It's in West Virginia. I don't know exactly where, but there you go. That is number nine.
All right, let's go to Boston. Have you ever been to Boston?
[00:14:34] Chris: I have.
[00:14:36] Jeff: Boston's a cool place. I like it. Tons of history. This happened in 1942 in Boston. It was a nightclub called the Coconut Grove, uh, run by a guy, a guy named Barney Welansky. I guess I'm saying his last name, right. Anyway, he had mob ties and, um, he had some political connections. And I'll get to that in a second. But he was the manager of this nightclub and he wanted to pack as many people in as he possibly could because more people, more money.
And he had been worried about people leaving without paying. Like they were ordering, ordering drinks, but then they, you know, they skip out on the bill or whatever. So what he did is he, he locked a bunch of the exits to prevent people from leaving. Yeah. You can see where this is going. He had, uh, so the, the name of this nightclub is Coconut Grove. So he is going for like a tropical theme. So he had palm tree like decor up on the, the, uh, walls. And the stuff that it was made of was incredibly flammable. This was during the war, World War II. So there was a shortage of freon , so he used some other gas, I don't know what, for his air conditioning. And it was incredibly flammable. Because of this decor, he had a bunch of drapes, uh, along the walls, and fabric covered the ceiling. You see where this is going.
[00:16:12] Chris: Yeah. And I'm thinking tiki torches.
[00:16:15] Jeff: Oh yeah, yeah right. So the capacity for this nightclub was 476. Uh, the night that this fire happened, there were a thousand people.
[00:16:30] Chris: Oh no.
[00:16:31] Jeff: That's the estimate. Yeah. So over twice the amount. Uh, so they of course interviewed witnesses after this fire. A lot of people said there was a bus boy that was messing with a light above a table. And it turns out there was a couple sitting at a table, like in a booth. And they wanted some quiet time to kind of make out. And so the guy unscrewed the light bulb. He just wanted to have a little fun, make out with his girlfriend, maybe get a handy under the table. The possibilities are endless if we don't have a light above our heads.
[00:17:14] Chris: That's true.
[00:17:16] Jeff: So he unscrewed the light bulb and this, uh, Barney Welansky, the guy who owned it, told a busboy go screw the light bulb back in. Well, when he screwed it in, um, he lit a match so that he could see exactly where to, to put the light bulb. The investigation uncovered that that was not the cause of the fire. That wasn't it. It was something else. It was an electrical short or, or whatever. But this bus boy, he had a hard time in life because he felt guilty, cuz a lot of people said the fire started around it and, uh, where he was and, and the fact that he lit a match and, and whatever. But he was cleared in the investigation.
[00:17:59] Chris: Wrong place, wrong time.
[00:18:01] Jeff: Exactly. So this nightclub had one revolving door. That was it. All the other exits were blocked. Uh, so obviously people panicked, you know, when they smell smoke, see fire and all this flammable shit. It's like this guy who ran this nightclub said, whatever flammable shit I can get, I'm gonna slap it on the walls and the ceiling.
[00:18:26] Chris: Just load it up.
[00:18:27] Jeff: Yeah. And, and I'll stick it in my air conditioning unit too. Like here we go. And the, uh, the revolving door was all they had. So people start panicking and they, you know, they're trying to get out. And so the door jams and it eventually breaks. And so now it's not even moving. Like they couldn't get it.
[00:18:46] Chris: Damn.
[00:18:46] Jeff: And so people start dying of, you know, or, or passing out from smoke inhalation, and then obviously dying. This killed 492 people.
[00:18:56] Chris: Crazy.
[00:18:57] Jeff: Welansky. I know it. Lansky was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for 19 counts of manslaughter. So they were able to get him on 19 counts, obviously responsible for a lot more. The Boston mayor at the time of the fire was the governor of Massachusetts later on, and governors have the authority to pardon people, right, convicted of state crimes. And so the mayor pardons Welansky after four years, And both of them had mob ties.
So it was probably...
[00:19:36] Chris: There you go.
[00:19:37] Jeff: A threat on the mayor. Yeah. Like get this guy out. So he served four years in prison. I think he died not too long after that. I think he had cancer or something. He lived like just a few more months after he got outta prison. So...
[00:19:51] Chris: It's all in who you know. He had some connections.
[00:19:54] Jeff: Yeah, it is. Yeah, it does pay to have some connections.
[00:19:57] Chris: Made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
[00:20:00] Jeff: Right. So this is gonna be a, a common theme, or this will pop up in a few of these, how something like this happens on a massive scale and it causes government leaders to react and to enact some regulations to try to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
And so one of these came about, which was, if you have a revolving door, you have to have a normal door next to it. So next time you walk into a building.
[00:20:34] Chris: Interesting.
[00:20:35] Jeff: And you go through a revolving door, notice there's gonna be a regular door right next to it. Yeah.
[00:20:39] Chris: Yep, sure is. Never thought about that.
[00:20:42] Jeff: I haven't either, but that came about because of this Coconut Grove, uh, nightclub fire.
[00:20:48] Chris: See, that's, that's fascinating when you, when you, to hear things like that and, and realize, you know, why things are the way they are now from stuff like that.
[00:20:59] Jeff: Yeah. And I gotta say it always, it, it bugs me, like you'll have people running for office and they say, oh, we need to get rid of regulations. Right. Get rid of these regulations, regulations, regulations. Well, I'm not saying all regulations that are put in place are good, but there is a reason, and usually a really good reason, that we have a lot of the regulations that we do. And it's for shit like this, like...
[00:21:23] Chris: Yeah.
[00:21:24] Jeff: Look at your history, you know? Uh, and you don't have to look very far.
OK, so that was number eight. Number seven, we're going to North Carolina. Have you been to North Carolina?
[00:21:38] Chris: I've been to North Carolina. You know, I don't think I've been to West Virginia, but, uh, I bet North Carolina was better.
[00:21:48] Jeff: West Virginia is beautiful, like it's really pretty. It's just, it's everything else that I don't want.
[00:21:57] Chris: I, I've flown over it. Now, when I flew over it one time and, and it was when they were doing all this, uh, stripping of, and, and you could just see, you know, hills blown apart. Like they're just...
[00:22:09] Jeff: Yeah, cutting off the top of mountains. Yeah.
[00:22:11] Chris: Yeah. Like you could see that everywhere. But anyway... Yeah, so North Carolina, yeah I've been there.
[00:22:19] Jeff: Documentary, um, recommendation time since we're talking about West Virginia. Watch The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. It is a fascinating train wreck of a documentary about a family in West Virginia. And it's hilarious. It's also disturbing in a lot of ways. But anyway, it's really good.
So for those of you out there taking notes, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. All right. So North Carolina, this is another shipwreck. This is in 1865, a significant year. That's the end of the Civil War. This is the General Lyon. That was the name of the ship. It was a steamship that would transport Union troops.
I don't remember where it was taking troops, but they were off the coast of North Carolina, Cape Hatteras, and there was a fire that broke out in the engine room. And they couldn't get anybody to rescue them. I mean, this is 1865, so they had to do like that other ship did, like, turn your flag upside down, let 'em know you're in distress. But I mean, that's really all you can do.
And 500 people drown or were killed in the fire, and they never conducted any kind of, of an, uh, investigation. This was in March of 1865. So just a couple of weeks later, the Civil War comes to an end, and that consumed everybody's attention, the news and everything else. And so nothing ever came of this. It was like 500 people died in this shipwreck and, and nobody was ever held accountable or anything.
[00:24:12] Chris: It's amazing.
[00:24:13] Jeff: Yeah. And that's the estimate. I mean, who knows? Could have been more, could have been less, but it was around 500.
All right, number six, we're going to Texas.
[00:24:25] Chris: All right.
[00:24:25] Jeff: Could you locate... for those of you who don't know we are in Texas, um, so I'm gonna test Chris's geography here. Could you locate Texas City on a map?
[00:24:37] Chris: Very close. I, if, if not exactly I could get close. Yeah. It's right on the way to Galveston.
[00:24:45] Jeff: Yes. So for those of you who don't know, you're not from here, uh, first of all, congratulations. But second of all, uh, if you're to drive south, like you go through Houston, you keep going south, you're gonna get close to Galveston.
Uh, look as you're going south, look off to the left a little bit and you'll see this huge mess of smoke and other shit just rising into the air. If you wanna know how to get to Texas City, you could probably just roll down your window and smell. Just follow your nose.
[00:25:21] Chris: It's horrible.
[00:25:22] Jeff: Yeah, it's terrible. So they have a bunch of oil refineries there. It is hideous looking. I honestly don't know anything about the city itself. That's what I associate Texas City with. Just all these pollutants, uh, you know, in the air and, and this oil refinery. Anyway, this happened in 1947. There is a port in Texas City. There was a French ship, uh, called the Grandcamp that was docked in the port and it was loaded, tell me if you think this sounds wise, it was loaded with 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate.
[00:26:02] Chris: No, I don't think so. We've heard, we've heard about ammonium nitrate in a few other disasters. So...
[00:26:10] Jeff: Yes we have, and not really knowing anything about it, other than it can blow shit up, just knowing that right there, like, that's not a good idea. 2300 tons of it. That can't be good. OK. So this Grandcamp, it was, what it was doing is, so it was a French ship, as I said, and it was coming over here to get the ammonium nitrate, cuz that's used in fertilizer. So it was taking it back to Europe and then they sell it to the farmers over there.
So they picked up the ammonium nitrate and they tried to dock in the Houston port and the Houston port people said, fuck no, look how much ammonium nitrate you have on your ship. We're not letting you in, like that's not gonna happen. So they go to Texas City and Texas City's like, yeah, we'll take you. Come on in.
[00:27:05] Chris: We stink already.
[00:27:07] Jeff: Right. Yeah. We already stink. How much worse could it get? So there was another ship close by that had 961 tons of ammonium nitrate. So this is, um, this is not good.
[00:27:24] Chris: Yeah. Just go part next to them.
[00:27:26] Jeff: Right. This is a recipe for disaster, which is absolutely what would happen. So a fire broke out on the Grandcamp, the French ship around eight o'clock, and, in the morning. And so people see this ship on fire and probably did exactly what I would do. They just gathered at the shoreline and started watching it, like...
[00:27:53] Chris: Oh.
[00:27:53] Jeff: I mean, yeah, they had no, no way to know exactly what was on board. So they're like, hey, there's a fire. That's kind of cool. Let's watch this. Well, about an hour later, the ship exploded and the blast leveled a thousand buildings on the land.
[00:28:12] Chris: Holy shit.
[00:28:13] Jeff: So a thousand buildings in Texas City were just demolished instantaneously. It caused a chain reaction. Other shit blew up. The ship next to it obviously blew up, the one that had 961 tons. Get this. The anchor on the Grandcamp was blown 1.6 miles and it weighed two tons.
[00:28:39] Chris: No. Wow.
[00:28:40] Jeff: So just blew it out of the water and then landed somewhere in the city.
It blew six, uh, 6,350 tons of steel into the air. So all this shit is just raining down on people, killed people. I mean some people were crushed. Galveston, which is 10 miles away, half of the buildings in Galveston had windows shattered when this happened.
[00:29:04] Chris: Dang.
[00:29:06] Jeff: Unbelievable.
[00:29:07] Chris: That's horrible.
[00:29:08] Jeff: It took a week, uh, to put out all the fires in Texas City. It took them over a month to identify all the bodies. And, um, as you might expect, there was a lawsuit, um, and this was filed in federal court. So Congress passed a law sometime in the 1940s called the Federal Tort Claims Act, which was basically, so typically governments have immunity. Like there's, it's pretty restricted in, in what you can sue government entities for. Um, those circumstances are pretty limited. But this particular law kind of opened the door on that to allow people to sue the federal government for tort claims. So if you've been wrong by some entity in the federal government, you could sue. And, uh, there was a huge lawsuit over this. It goes all the way to the US Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the US.
So they denied those claims. And I don't remember, I don't know if I've read that case or not, but I don't remember exactly what all the reasons were, but the Supreme Court ruled against people who had filed suit against the US government. Congress responded to that ruling by enacting legislation that amounted to about 17 million dollars for survivors of that disaster.
But there you go. That is the Texas City explosion. Had you ever heard about that? Uh, before?
[00:30:43] Chris: No, I have not.
[00:30:45] Jeff: I had heard about it. Yeah. I had heard about it. I didn't know a lot about it, but it, and I wasn't even sure when it happened. It was just one of those things I had heard about. Oh yeah, there was a big explosion in Texas City. Anyway, that killed 581 people.
OK. Number five. Are we disastered out yet?
[00:31:04] Chris: No, let's keep going.
[00:31:08] Jeff: It gets worse. Yay!
[00:31:09] Chris: Of course it does.
[00:31:10] Jeff: All right. Uh, we're going to Chicago, in 1903. Have you been to Chicago?
[00:31:17] Chris: I've been to Chicago.
[00:31:19] Jeff: Chicago's cool too.
[00:31:20] Chris: Yeah. I like Chicago.
[00:31:20] Jeff: I like Chicago, yeah. All right. So this is a theater called the Iroquois Theater, in 1903, uh, 1903. This theater held 1,602 people. Tell me, if you think this is a good idea, they had one entrance.
[00:31:39] Chris: No, I don't think so.
[00:31:41] Jeff: As they were billing the opening of this Iroquois Theater, they put out ads in newspapers in Chicago and advertised it as fireproof. Like you come here, you're gonna be protected. You don't have to worry about a fire. It's all good.
[00:31:57] Chris: And the Titanic was unsinkable.
[00:31:59] Jeff: Right. That's exactly what I thought. To kind of bolster their claim, they brought people in to tour the theater before it actually opened. These are experts. Like they brought in, uh, some fire chief, and then there was somebody else I don't remember. But these were experts, and the people who toured the theater said that fireproof claim, they're full of shit.
Like , there's flammable stuff in here. They don't know what they're talking about. They're just trying to make a buck. Uh, don't believe it. But they still opened. Five weeks after this theater opened is when the fire happened, and it was on December 30th. It was a matinee, um, so there were a bunch of kids there, uh, because you know, Christmas break, school's out.
Um, so people were going in the middle of the day to watch a, a performance. Uh, between twenty one hundred and twenty two hundred people were there. And there was a spotlight, and sparks from that spotlight ignited the curtain on stage and...
[00:33:05] Chris: The non-flammable curtain.
[00:33:07] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. People were freaking out, of course. And there were fire exits. So there was only one normal entrance and exit, but there were fire exits. But they had some weird lock on 'em that people were unfamiliar with. And so people are beating on the door trying to figure out how the lock works and a lot of people died right there at the fire escape.
And as a result of this, as you would expect, there were all sorts of regulations put in place. I put two of these in my notes, cuz I found these the most interesting. Do you know what a panic bar is on a door?
[00:33:44] Chris: I've heard of it. I'm trying to think that, I don't know.
[00:33:48] Jeff: You'll know what it is when I describe it and I didn't know what it was called, but this is like, and if you're in any kind of public building or whatever and you just push on the glass door, like the, the, the horizontal bar in the middle of the door, just pushing on that, that's a panic bar. So if you have a building that holds over X amount of people, you have to have a door that has a panic bar, where there's no weird latch on it or anything. It's just, you push on the door and push on that bar and the door's gonna open. So...
[00:34:19] Chris: Which is what's in a lot of schools too.
[00:34:22] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's a good example. Yeah. That's what they have in schools. Yeah. Also. if you have a building that has X amount of people in it, the doors have to open out instead of in. In this particular place, the door opened in. And that obviously makes it harder for people to get out. So that's why doors open out on these big buildings instead of in.
[00:34:48] Chris: It's, it's terrible that, that it takes these events to get those things, you know, the way they should be. But yeah, you're right before, you know, the regulations can get out of hand, but there are certainly some great ones there for a reason.
[00:35:10] Jeff: Yeah. And I like learning about that. Just, I mean, it's interesting. And from a historical perspective, it's, it's interesting to learn why that stuff exists now. Uh, 602, 602 people died in that fire.
All right. That was number five. We're staying in Chicago. This is number four. We're gonna fast forward a few years to 1915. This involves the Chicago River. So you've been to Chicago. There's a river running right through the middle of the city. That is the Chicago River empties out into Lake Michigan.
This ship was the SS Eastland and it was used for tours. So it would take people here and there on some kind of tour, um, you know, go around the city, whatever. There had been trouble with this ship in the past where it would list, so kind of topple from side to side. It hadn't capsized, but it had worried a lot of people, like, that's kind of unstable.
July 24th, 1915, it is docked in the Chicago River, so right there in the middle of the city. Passengers began boarding and it had reached its capacity. It held 2,572 people. And it was pretty unstable, as I said, and it ended up capsizing, and a lot, they said a reason that it capsized when it did is a lot of passengers had gone below the deck to warm up.
Um, and it just caused the, the ship to become even more unstable that way for whatever reason. And when this ship capsized, a lot of those people on the lower deck were crushed by furniture. I mean, there were pianos flying and heavy, yeah, couches and whatnot. Uh, and here's the thing. It was only, only, only 20 feet to the bottom of the river at that point. But so many people were trapped.
[00:37:14] Chris: Yeah, and couldn't get out.
[00:37:15] Jeff: And they just couldn't get out. Yeah. And, um, back then, a lot of Americans didn't even know how to swim. Like that just wasn't a thing that people did. I mean, there weren't, I don't know, back then in the 19 teens, were there even public swimming pools? I don't, I kind of doubt it.
That was probably reserved for the wealthy, like they had it at their homes, but...
[00:37:37] Chris: Probably so.
[00:37:39] Jeff: Yeah, but a lot of people just couldn't swim. Also, the the type of clothes that people were wearing, I mean, that's not really conducive to swimming. But a lot of people were just trapped in that ship. They couldn't even make it out.
844 people died.
[00:37:53] Chris: Whoa. Really stepped it up from the last one, six hundreds to eight hundreds.
[00:37:58] Jeff: 602. And now we're at 844. So yeah, we did make quite a leap.
[00:38:02] Chris: Yeah.
[00:38:03] Jeff: So I've been to Chicago and I, there's a memorial there. There's something, I remember reading about this, and I'm like, what the hell, are you telling me a ship sank and killed 844 people right here, like right in the middle of the city?
[00:38:19] Chris: Yeah.
[00:38:19] Jeff: Like how the hell did that even happen? But it was just so fast.
[00:38:24] Chris: Well, especially saying, I didn't know how deep it was. But yeah, 20 feet is nothing if they could get out. I mean yeah, that does assume they can swim. So that is a another thing, but...
[00:38:36] Jeff: Yeah, but if you could get out, I mean, it's, it's pretty narrow. I mean, it's not a wide river at that point, like...
[00:38:43] Chris: Right.
[00:38:43] Jeff: You know, it'd be, it'd be pretty easy to be rescued, I would think, but...
[00:38:47] Chris: Man, fire and drowning, those have gotta be horrible ways, horrible ways to go.
[00:38:54] Jeff: Yeah. I think I'll put the question to you when we get done with all this. Uh, among all these, what would be your preferred way to go out?
Um, it's probably not gonna be this next one. Let's go to 1978. Uh, we're leaving the US. But don't get too excited cuz we're going to South America, to, uh, I never know how to say this, is it Guyana? Is it Guyana? Is it Giana? I don't know. I'm sure the, the Spanish pronunciation is Guyana, but it seems like I always hear people say Guyana, but whatever. We are, if you don't know, talking about Jonestown.
So what do you know about Jim Jones and Jonestown? Do you have a lot of knowledge there?
[00:39:42] Chris: I know he was a freak. I know he was...
[00:39:46] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:39:46] Chris: Way out there and, you know, that's where you get the "drinking the Kool-Aid", um...
[00:39:54] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:39:55] Chris: Term that, that gets thrown around. That was cyanide right?
[00:39:59] Jeff: Yes. Cyanide among some other things, I think. But it was mostly cyanide. Yeah. OK. So, for those of you don't know, we're talking about Jim Jones. He started a church. He originally started it in Indianapolis called the People's Temple back in 1955. And he moved to California in the early 1970s because he was feeling social pressure in Indiana. So Jim Jones was, um, I mean, he, he professed Christianity originally along with Marxism. So he was big time into communism. Everybody has equal possessions and all that. And he was for integrating schools in Indiana and that ruffled a lot of feathers. And so he finally got fed up and moved to California in the early 1970s. The headquarters of the church was in San Francisco. There was also a branch in LA and oh, I don't remember where else in, in California. But he got crazier as things went on. He got really paranoid. He started taking drugs, even though he told his members not to. But he was taking pretty much anything he could get his hands on. He was having, uh, affairs with several church members, basically doing all the things.
And he's not alone in this. How many preachers have we seen through the years who are...
[00:41:25] Chris: Right.
[00:41:26] Jeff: Doing the very thing they're telling their members not to.
[00:41:29] Chris: Kinda like the political thing. They're all coming out against the stuff that they're doing.
[00:41:34] Jeff: That is absolutely right. So he decided that he's gonna take his, uh, church from California to South America, to a little country called Guyana. And the Guyanan government was basically a socialist government / communist government. So they were sympathetic to his views, and he found his home there. So they started constructing this, this camp, um, that everybody called Jonestown. That's what it was referred to as, and so more and more church members start coming down there.
He was increasingly becoming crazy. Like he was losing it. People were saying he was slurring his speech. He was talking about the end is coming. He would have these things that he called white nights where he would, so he would stand in the middle of, of the camp and he would yell on a bullhorn for people to come join him.
And he kept talking about, uh, what should we do if people are coming for us, because he's paranoid. He thinks people are coming for him. You know, the end is near, all that kind of stuff. He thought maybe they'll go to Russia, the Soviet Union's communist. So, will they take us? And then he thought, why don't we just end our lives here instead of anybody getting us or whatever. So there was at least one point where he handed people cups of a liquid and told them that it was poison and it was gonna kill him. And so he wanted to see, you know, who's, who's loyal to me. Course it didn't have anything in it, but he wanted to know, you know, who can I count on, who's on my side, or whatever.
And of course, can you imagine the traumatic experience, if somebody hands you a cup and tells you that, you know, this is gonna kill you, are you loyal to me or not? And you feel pressured to take it because you don't know what's gonna happen if you don't. You're, you're terrified of this man.
[00:43:37] Chris: Right.
[00:43:37] Jeff: And you're terrified. And, and he would have guards who had, uh, machine guns, you know, standing right there next to him. So, you know, the implication is, yeah, you are gonna take this. Um, that happened at least once. Those so-called loyalty tests.
[00:43:53] Chris: I don't know if you could call that loyalty if somebody's standing there with a gun on you.
[00:43:57] Jeff: Right. Exactly. But he clearly wasn't, he was out of his, out of his mind. So there were family members concerned. Right. And you always see this with any kind of a cult. There were family members concerned, like, you know, I wanna know what happened to my loved one. Where are they? Can I get 'em back? Can we get somebody involved?
And it always happens that people contact somebody in government. Like, can you help out? So people had written a Congressman in California named Leo Ryan. And Leo Ryan agreed to go down to Jonestown and kind of observe what was going on. And so he and a news crew from NBC flew down there. And initially Jim Jones was not gonna let the Congressman in, but later decided to. The Congressman was attacked by a guy, uh, with a knife and they were able to fight him off. And, uh, not too long after that, the Congressman said, you know, I'm, I'm gonna leave, but I'll be back. We'll sort this out later, whatever. So he leaves. The news crew goes with him. And there were some other defectors who said they wanted to go too. And Jim Jones was like, OK, you can go.
But they were, of course terrified. And Jim Jones had no intention of letting them leave at all. So he had his guards chase them down and there was a shootout on the airstrip. Uh, the Congressman was killed. There is footage of this on YouTube. One of the cameramen, I think, from NBC was shot. I don't think he was killed, but you can hear the gunfire. I think you can see some of the people shooting. But anyway, after that, is when it happens. Uh, Jim Jones calls everybody to the camp, uh, the center and, um, they've got, uh, it was actually Flavor Aid. I've always heard Kool-Aid too, but Flavor Aid, I didn't know what Flavor Aid was. I had to look it up. It's like an even shitier version of Kool-Aid. Like , but anyway, that's what he had 'em drink.
And there is an audio tape of this happening. Have you ever heard it?
[00:46:12] Chris: No, I don't think so.
[00:46:13] Jeff: Yeah. I first heard it on CNN several years ago. And I'm assuming you can find this on YouTube as well. It's not video, but it's audio and you can hear Jim Jones in the background. And what's even more disturbing is you can hear people screaming, you can hear babies crying, like, and, and that's what, so people always said well, you're drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Like that, like you mentioned that while ago, drinking, the Kool-Aid. Like, you're doing this voluntarily, you're just swallowing, whatever somebody says. But you're going along with it. Clearly not everybody went along with this. Like, it was a lot of people and we don't know how many, but a lot of people just were forced to do it against their will.
And then he eventually offed himself. I don't know if he drank it too, or if he shot himself, or whatever. But 909 people died at Jonestown.
[00:47:07] Chris: Wow.
[00:47:07] Jeff: So, yeah, that is, um, shocking.
[00:47:11] Chris: Absolutely.
[00:47:13] Jeff: I had 1979 on, oh, no, it was '78. OK. Yeah, I did say that right, 1978. There's a really good book, um, if anybody is interested in this. It's called The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Uh, the author's name is Jeff Guinn. I read it last year. If you want to get into a lot of detail about this psychopath, then, um, that's your go-to book. It was really good and, and disturbing, uh, at the same time. But I find cults interesting.
[00:47:43] Chris: They're amazingly fascinating.
[00:47:46] Jeff: Yeah
[00:47:47] Chris: Just the, the psychology behind that, and so many people that, you know, prior to getting involved in a cult, people think like these are intelligent people. These are critical thinking people.
[00:48:04] Jeff: Yes.
[00:48:04] Chris: And, and somehow, they're, they're overtaken and that loyalty is 100% and that critical thinking goes out the window.
[00:48:16] Jeff: It does.
[00:48:16] Chris: It's just amazing how that happens.
[00:48:19] Jeff: I just watched, uh, there's a four part documentary on HBO Max, on Heaven's Gate cult and those people, for the most part, who joined and stayed, they were intelligent. Like they, these were not the dregs of society. Like these were smart people. But it is amazing what you can get roped into. And then the conformity of it as well. Just the, the, uh, you're compelled to conform and then do what everybody else is doing.
And, yeah, it's crazy. The whole, as you said, the whole psychological aspect is, is fascinating in and of itself. So anyway, that's Jonestown.
All right. That was number three. We have two left. We're going to New York City.
[00:49:09] Chris: Freak show central .
[00:49:14] Jeff: There you go. That reminds me of the George Carlin quote, I heard him say once, um, "By being born, you have a ticket to the freak show. Just by being born, you got a ticket to the freak show. But if you're born in America, you got a front row seat."
[00:49:30] Chris: That is about right.
[00:49:32] Jeff: Yep. Isn't it. I like that quote. All right. This is in 1904, New York City. This is the ship, uh, the General Slocum, is what it was called. It was a passenger ship, so carried people here and there around New York City.
On this particular day, it was mostly women and children and they were headed to a church picnic on Long Island. So they're gonna go do their thing, and, uh, on Long Island, have a church picnic. This ship was docked in the East River. OK. So they're gonna make their way over to Long Island that way. As they're going along toward their destination, a 12 year old comes up to the captain and says, there's a fire. And the captain was like, yeah, whatever kid. He didn't believe him. Like, oh, aren't you cute? You're funny. Ha ha. Didn't pay attention to him. Well, joke's on the captain cuz the 12 year old was absolutely correct. There was a fire on board. This ship had lifeboats, but they were all tied up and inaccessible.
There were life preservers, but they were incredibly old and they even had life jackets too. And both of those were totally useless. They just fell apart. They had not been maintained well. And so they served absolutely no purpose. This was what I was saying a while ago. Most people couldn't even swim. Uh, and this was a Sunday. It was a church picnic. I think it was on a Sunday, but a lot of people were in their Sunday best. Right. And so clothes where you're just gonna sink. Like you can't even move around in these. You could barely move around on land, much less in the water. The captain ran the ship aground just to try to save people. But by then, most of the passengers had drowned or they died in the fire. Eight people were indicted, but only the captain was found guilty. They found him guilty of criminal negligence and he was sentenced to 10 years and he was paroled after about three and a half. And then later on, for whatever reason, he was pardoned by President William Taft in 1912.
I don't know what the reasoning was behind that, but he was pardoned for that. So that tragedy killed 957 people.
[00:51:59] Chris: Dang. That is a lot of people.
[00:52:01] Jeff: Isn't it?
[00:52:03] Chris: And for being right there near land.
[00:52:07] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like the Chicago thing.
[00:52:10] Chris: Yeah.
[00:52:10] Jeff: Like it's not like you're in the middle of the ocean. You're right there.
Yeah. All right. So here we go. Number one, this is the king of all non-natural disasters in US history, not counting pandemics, not counting acts of war. It is seven miles north of Memphis on the Mississippi River. Have you been to Memphis?
[00:52:35] Chris: I have been to Memphis.
[00:52:36] Jeff: What'd you think of Memphis?
[00:52:39] Chris: I mean, I, I've, I like the downtown area. I've, I've heard more about Memphis as, as not being the greatest place. Uh...
[00:52:49] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:52:50] Chris: I enjoy being down by the river and that's, that's nice. I went to Graceland, you know, the touristy stuff.
[00:52:58] Jeff: Right, right. We were gonna go to Graceland when we were there a few years ago and holy shit, the ticket prices are outrageous. Once we learned what the ticket prices were, I was like, I don't care that much about it.
[00:53:10] Chris: It was a long time ago when I went, I don't even remember.
[00:53:14] Jeff: OK. So this is the, uh, the ship, the Sultana, S-U-L-T-A-N-A. I don't know if I'm saying that right or not, but anyway, this is in 1865. So the Civil War had just ended and there were a bunch of Union POWs in Mississippi. And so the war has come to an end. So the US government put out a notice that they would pay X amount of dollars, I don't remember what it was, if you can transport prisoners back home, we'll give you X amount of dollars per prisoner that you bring back. And so these captains of these boats are like, they're jumping on this, like uh, yeah, I can make a lot of money. I'm gonna haul these people up to wherever and dump 'em off and I'm gonna get money from the US government. So there you go. So the Sultana, uh, had an issue in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and it was a boiler and a person tried to repair the boiler and kind of did, but it was a falty repair. There was, there were problems with it. The ship held only 376 people, but it left Vicksburg, get this, with 2,130 people on board.
[00:54:27] Chris: No.
[00:54:27] Jeff: The capacity's 376. They shove 2,130 people on board this ship.
[00:54:35] Chris: Unbelievable.
[00:54:36] Jeff: Yeah, not a good idea. Seven miles north of Memphis is where this happened. Um, one of the boilers exploded. It immediately took out the captain. So it, it um, took him right out instantaneously. So now this ship is just going wherever the water's taking it. Many of the people who didn't die in the initial explosion, and they think that was quite a few who died when that boiler exploded, a lot of people who didn't die in the, uh, in the explosion though, they jumped ship.
But a lot of these individuals, they were POWs, right? They were weak. They hadn't been well fed. They hadn't been well taken care of. And we're talking about the goddamn Mississippi River. And every time I cross that thing, it is amazing how wide it is.
[00:55:26] Chris: It is crazy wide.
[00:55:28] Jeff: Unbelievable. So you're, I mean, I was gonna say swimming against the tide, but you, you're in trouble. If you're in the middle of that thing and you're trying to swim, especially in a weakened condition, I mean, that's just not gonna happen. 1,169 people died in that ship wreck.
[00:55:47] Chris: Over three times the number of people that should have been on the ship to begin with.
[00:55:50] Jeff: Yes. Yep.
[00:55:52] Chris: Wow.
[00:55:52] Jeff: So, I talk about regulations. I mean, I, I'm sure there were regulations put in place with stuff like this. And it wasn't, I'm sure, it wasn't the only ship overloaded with people like that, but, uh, nobody was ever held accountable. I mean, the war had just ended and that's where all the attention was and nothing ever came of this at all. So that is the shipwreck of the, Sultana, if I'm saying that right. So there you go. Isn't that crazy?
[00:56:24] Chris: That is crazy. For what it's worth, I mean, a lot of these were some time ago. Maybe that means we're making some progress. I don't know.
[00:56:35] Jeff: Yeah. I did notice that. So what's the most recent? Was that Jonestown, I guess? 1979, or '78? So yeah, progress, probably still have a ways to go. But like you said, it's unfortunate this, that this stuff has to happen for somebody to take action. But a lot of times I think it's just a matter of learning, you know, that, I mean, you don't know what you don't know.
[00:57:02] Chris: Right. There's a, if there's a silver lining, that's it.
[00:57:06] Jeff: Yeah.
[00:57:07] Chris: We're making progress.
[00:57:09] Jeff: All right. So there you go. That is the top 10 non-natural disasters in US history.
If you like that, you might want to explore more stuff surrounding our show. And to do that, you can go to subpartalks.com. You can email us, you can leave us a voicemail. If you wanna say whatever, just it doesn't matter. Say anything doesn't matter. We love reading messages and hearing messages from our listeners.
[00:57:39] Chris: And we might just put it on a future show.
[00:57:42] Jeff: Oh, we might. You might make it on, imagine that. You'll have your 15 minutes of fame, or maybe like 30 seconds of fame, whatever . Um, if you have a suggestion for topics in the future that you would like to hear or know more about or whatever, uh, let us know. Uh, we will, uh, take that into consideration for sure.
You can follow us on social media. On Twitter, we are @subpartalks, on Facebook we are subpartalks. You can follow us our personal accounts on Twitter. I am @independentjeff.
[00:58:16] Chris: And I am @chrisbradfordtx.
[00:58:19] Jeff: And we would love it if you would follow us. Whatever platform you're listening to this on, go ahead and subscribe, follow us. That way you'll get new episodes every week. You don't even have to do anything. That sounds like a pretty good deal. And while you're at it, go ahead and rate us. You can give us a review. If you're so inclined, we would love for you to give us five stars. And, um, again, comment, say whatever, doesn't matter what you say, but we love hearing from our listeners.
And finally share this on social media. Uh, refer us to your friends or whoever you know lurking about who you think might wanna listen to this podcast. The more listeners we have, the easier it is for us to bring you this content each and every week. And I think that is about it. Chris, of all these disasters, what would you be your preferred method for, for going out?
[00:59:19] Chris: Fires and drowning would just be horrible. I think, wow. Maybe the first thing that comes to mind trying to run back through those is the, uh, explosion. Like either, either just the explosion itself or, you know, something rains down on me from the explosion and just take, you know, just wipe me out. I don't even know what's happening.
[00:59:42] Jeff: Yeah. That was my first thought. So the Texas City thing, like..
[00:59:45] Chris: Yeah.
[00:59:46] Jeff: Uh, where you're close enough to where you don't even know what happens. Like, would you even hear it? I don't know. Yeah.
[00:59:53] Chris: Kind of like a nuclear explosion. You want to, you want to go toward where it's hitting?
[00:59:58] Jeff: Right, right.
[00:59:59] Chris: Just, just get it over with .
[01:00:02] Jeff: Well, that would do it.
[01:00:03] Chris: Yeah it would.
[01:00:04] Jeff: All right. Very good. That is it for this week's episode. We hope to have you back for next week's.
[01:00:13] Chris: Everybody stays safe out there. So, so that you're not featured on the show.
[01:00:18] Jeff: Please. Yes. Yes. We do not wanna feature you on a show like this. Uh, that would not be good. All right. Very good. We will see you all next week.
