History's A Disaster
History's A Disaster is a darkly funny true-history podcast digging into shipwrecks, train wrecks, and other real-life catastrophes — no sugarcoating, no boring lectures.
Episodes
100 episodes
French Pass Drift Dive Disaster
The most dangerous water often looks the calmest from the surface. French Pass sits like a postcard at the top of New Zealand’s South Island, but it hides the fastest tidal current in the country, a chaotic mix of eddies and standing waves, and...
Collision of the Andrea Doria and The Stockholm
A luxury Italian ocean liner glides toward New York with art on the walls, pools on deck, and new radar that’s supposed to make fog irrelevant. Then, off Nantucket, the SS Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm do the unthinkable: they read each oth...
SwissAir Flight 111 Fire
A modern airliner. A premium cabin upgrade. A faint smell that doesn’t seem urgent until it’s far too late. We’re diving into Swissair Flight 111, the 1998 MD-11 crash off Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, and the chain of hidden risks that turned a r...
The Malbone Street Wreck
A packed train, a brand-new tunnel, and a curve that demanded six miles per hour. Now add a labor strike, a rushed staffing decision, and an operator who never should have been put in that seat. That mix created the 1918 Malbone Street Wreck, s...
Union Oil 1984 Explosion Romeoville
A hairline crack doesn’t sound like much until it’s hissing flammable vapor at the base of a pressurized refinery tower. We’re telling the story of the 1984 Union Oil Refinery explosion in Romeoville, Illinois, a disaster that escalates in minu...
The White Ship Disaster
A royal party boat packed with nobles, wine, and bad decisions sets off from Barfleur and hits rock within minutes, and England never really recovers the same way. We’re telling the story of the White Ship disaster of 1120, the night William Ad...
Air Midwest Flight 5481
A plane can be perfectly flyable and still be doomed by paperwork and a wrench turn. On Air Midwest Flight 5481, a Beechcraft 1900D lifts off from Charlotte Douglas and, within moments, pitches up so steeply the crew can’t muscle it back down. ...
2017 Washington Amtrak Cascades Derailment
A passenger train on a brand-new route should not end up scattered across a highway, but that’s exactly what happened when Amtrak Cascades Train 501 hit a tight curve at more than double the posted limit and derailed onto I-5. We walk through h...
Split Rock Explosion
A played-out limestone quarry in the hills of New York should have faded into silence, but World War I turned Split Rock into something far more dangerous: a round-the-clock TNT factory built to feed an exploding demand for high explosives. We ...
The Sinking Of The Larchmont
A warm saloon, a clear night sky, and a cheap ticket from Providence to New York sounds like an easy win until the ocean decides otherwise. We’re telling the story of the 1907 sinking of the Larchmont, the deadliest maritime disaster in Rhode I...
Pan Am Flight 214
A thunderstorm can feel peaceful right up until you’re trapped inside the worst part of it. We start with that uneasy contrast, then head straight into the night Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707 called the Clipper Trade Wind, enters a holding pa...
The Wreck Of The Old 97
One minute you’re chasing a schedule. The next, you’re flying off the rails. We dig into the true story behind the Wreck of the Old 97, the notorious 1903 Southern Railway Fast Mail crash outside Danville, Virginia, and why a single downhill ru...
Castaway: Daniel Foss
Five years alone on a rock island with no trees, no soil, and no certainty of rescue is the kind of survival scenario people argue about online, until you hear what Daniel Foss reportedly lived through after an 1809 shipwreck in the Pacific. We...
Sinking of the SS Central America
Nine tons of gold. Nearly five hundred passengers. A hurricane powerful enough to turn a luxury-leaning paddle steamer into driftwood. We’re telling the story of the SS Central America, the 1857 shipwreck that wasn’t just a tragedy at sea, but ...
The Gimli Glider
A wide-body jet goes quiet at 41,000 feet, the cockpit starts losing systems, and the crew has to fly a Boeing 767 like a glider with no engines. That sounds impossible until you trace the real-world chain behind Air Canada Flight 143, the inci...
West Gate Bridge Disaster
A bridge is supposed to be the safest part of your commute, not the reason a city hears alarms for miles. The West Gate Bridge collapse in Melbourne is a brutal reminder that “close enough” and “we’ve got this” don’t belong anywhere near steel,...
Byford Dolphin Disaster
One wrong move in a pressurized diving system can turn routine maintenance into an instant mass casualty event. We’re telling the story of the 1983 Byford Dolphin saturation diving accident, a North Sea offshore drilling rig disaster that shows...
Granville Train Disaster
A normal commute should not end with a bridge collapsing onto a passenger train, but that is exactly what happened in Sydney’s suburb of Granville on January 18, 1977. We retrace the Granville Rail Disaster step by step, from a rail system stra...
The Mother’s Day Bus Crash
A charter bus full of seniors heads out on Mother’s Day for a quick casino run and never makes it. I’m Andrew, and I’m taking you step-by-step through the 1999 Mother’s Day Bus Crash on I-610 in New Orleans, one of the worst automotive accident...
Eastern Airlines Flight 212 Chatty Cockpit Crash
A DC-9 lifting off for a 35-minute hop shouldn’t end in a cornfield, but Eastern Airlines Flight 212 becomes a brutal lesson in how fast “normal” can collapse. We walk through the morning of September 11, 1974, as Flight 212 heads from Charlest...
The HMS Thetis Sinking
A submarine is already a coffin-shaped idea, but HMS Thetis proves how fast “routine” can become irreversible. We’re telling the story of the 1939 HMS Thetis disaster in Liverpool Bay, where a brand-new British Royal Navy T Class submarine goes...
Buffalo Creek Flood
A river valley can feel like the safest place in the world until the water comes with a roar. We’re telling the story of the Buffalo Creek disaster, the 1972 West Virginia flood that started with a coal waste dam built on sludge and ended with ...
Imperial Sugar Refinery Explosion
Sugar is supposed to be comfort. At an industrial scale, it can be an accelerant powerful enough to tear a building apart. We walk through the 2008 Imperial Sugar refinery explosion in Port Wentworth, Georgia, a catastrophic combustible dust ex...