Classic Failures

Lessons learned from the St. Francis Dam failure—and its impact on the civil engineering profession at-large.

On All Saints’ Day in 1755, the capital of Portugal was devastated by a combination earthquake-tsunami-firestorm. “People thought it was Judgment Day and that the world was coming to an end,” says Molesky.

In “Kitty Genovese,” author Kevin Cook debunks the myth that “38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”

How television turned A Christmas Story into a holiday classic, complete with its own mecca, the Christmas Story House and Museum.

November 10, 2010, marks the 35th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, sometimes referred to as the Titanic of the Great Lakes.

Jason Vuic, author of “The Yugo,” has referred to the Subaru 360 as the worst car ever sold in America. Ed Parsil, the co-founder of the Subaru 360 Club begs to differ.

Henry Ford's ill-conceived attempt to establish a sprawling rubber plantation in the middle of the Amazon has to be considered one of his greatest failures.

For 90 years, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remained the worst workplace disaster in New York history.

Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre was billed as “absolutely fireproof.” It went up in flames less than six weeks after opening.

When the Granville-to-Paris Express left Granville at 8:45 am on the morning of October 22, 1895 there was no reason for the crew and 131 passengers aboard to expect anything but an uneventful trip.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: From inauspicious debut to timeless classic.

From one of the most monumental failures of the twentieth century to one of the most instructive.

Save for different protagonists, the front-page newspaper headlines from May 7, 1937, bear a striking resemblance to those of the disaster-ridden autumn of 2001.

While It’s a Wonderful Life is often referred to as a sentimental movie, the issues it presents—questioning what makes a man a failure or a success—are hardly lighthearted.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse remains the most remarkable engineering failure in history.

Filled with successes and failures both large and small, The Wizard of Oz is perhaps the single greatest movie of the 20th century.