Wreckage & Ruins

February 3, 1959 became known as The Day the Music Died, but the story began long before the airplane left the runway. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were traveling through the frozen...

On September 8, 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane struck the Texas coast and became the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. Galveston was a prosperous port city built on a low barrier island. Hurricane forecasting...

On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Ohio, killing 46 people. Investigators would eventually trace the disaster to a hidden fracture in eyebar...

Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition was supposed to make the first crossing of Antarctica. The expedition never reached its starting point. After Endurance became trapped in Weddell Sea pack ice, Shackleton and 27...

The Byford Dolphin incident was a catastrophic 1983 saturation-diving accident caused by a sudden loss of pressure during a diving-bell transfer. On November 5, 1983, four divers were inside a pressurized chamber system...

Pompeii began its final day as a thriving Roman city beneath a familiar mountain. Then Mount Vesuvius erupted. CC & Kitty follow the eruption of 79 CE through Pompeii and neighboring Herculaneum, from falling pumice and...

Jamestown’s survival was never guaranteed. CC and Kitty examine the Starving Time, the colony’s disastrous location, its escalating conflict with the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, and the documented history of Pocahontas...

After delivering components for the Little Boy atomic bomb, USS Indianapolis was torpedoed and sank in approximately 12 minutes. Nearly 900 men entered the Philippine Sea. Only 316 survived the wounds, exposure...

CC and Kitty trace several bizarre medical treatments from history, the reasoning that once made them seem plausible, and the human cost when the cure became another danger. Subscribe to Wreckage & Ruins for weekly...

The Radium Girls painted glowing watch dials and were instructed to point their brushes with their lips. When radium lodged in their bones, illness followed, and proving the cause became another fight. CC and Kitty...

The Bhopal gas tragedy began during the night of December 2–3, 1984, when methyl isocyanate escaped from the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant. The Bhopal disaster killed thousands in its immediate aftermath...

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, approximately 12,000 to 13,000 Confederate soldiers emerged from Seminary Ridge and began advancing across exposed fields toward the Union center. General Robert E. Lee...

On March 18, 1925, the Tri-State Tornado crossed Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people and becoming the deadliest single tornado in recorded U.S. history. CC and Kitty follow its 219-mile path, the...

<p>The bubonic plague was more than swollen lymph nodes and medieval panic. CC and Kitty trace Yersinia pestis, the Black Death, Caffa, Florence, quarantine, plague myths, and the social collapse that reshaped Europe...

<p>Strange historical deaths have a way of becoming bigger than the facts. This week, CC and Kitty look at Rasputin’s death myth, Edward II’s infamous rumor, and Edgar Allan Poe’s unresolved final days. Poison...