Disasters and Mistakes of the 19th and Early 20th Quiz

Answer: Russia

The French invasion of Russia by most accounts was a complete disaster. Lasting from June 14, 1812, until December 14, 1812, the casualties were absolutely massive for the French Grand Armee. The war was caused by a variety of reasons, including Napoleon's inability to marry a Russian princess, a continental blockade system and embargo in an attempt to boost the French economy, and various nations turning their backs on France at the hands of the Russians.

Although the French Grande Armee had initially outnumbered the Russian army, the abandonment of Moscow by the Russians (and a failure of Napoleon to negotiate a peace offer) led to some devastating results. By October 1812, the Grande Armee was lacking food and water and was suffering from hypothermia due to extreme weather conditions.

By the beginning of December, Napoleon had left his army and returned to Paris. French troops would soon follow, and on December 14, 1812, the surviving soldiers in the Grande Armee would head back to Paris as well.

Unfortunately, Napoleon's reputation as a powerful leader would crumble. By 1821, he would be exiled and die while imprisoned on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Answer: Thin Red Line

The Battle of Balaclava began on October 25, 1853, but a series of costly mistakes following the initial success of the 93rd Highland Regiment proved deadly. To start the battle, the Russians had set up a first line of defense armed with heavy artillery and fortified positions in an attempt to take over a supply base at Balaclava. To counterattack, the Scottish 93rd Highland Regiment set up two long rows, now known as "The Thin Red Line" to push the Russians back.

Unfortunately, the continuing battle would fare less successfully. The British commander, Lord Raglan, who was commanding from higher ground, chose to send in his cavalry against a much larger Russian army. The other commander, Lord Cardigan, responsible for the Light Brigade, miscommunicated with Raglan, believing his troops were to defend their position. Cardigan is also believed to have been reluctant to attack as the order came from Lord Lucan (whom Cardigan detested). They did not join in the attack against the Russian army.

Further to this, there was a miscommunication as to the location of British guns that were feared to be taken by the Russians. Lucan and Cardigan, who lacked Raglan's viewpoint, could not agree on where the guns were. As a result, The Light Brigade would charge at the wrong gun batteries, leading them to be attacked on three sides in what is now called "The Valley of Death". When all was said and done, over 670 men began the charge. Just under 200 of them made it back to their lines. Nearly 120 were killed, and roughly 60 of them were captured.

Answer: Joseph Bazalgette

During the 1800s, there was a definite lack of investment and infrastructure effectively being put in place in London, England. The houses of Parliament were maintained quite well, but in 1858, cholera was running rampant in the other parts of the city. An invention recently installed in the city, "flush toilets", were proving to contribute to a noxious stench across the city so foul that it has now historically become known as "The Great Stink". A system of cesspits and citizens that were unwilling to pay to have them emptied and cleaned caused many of them to overflow into the city streets.

There was also a shortage of housing and an ever crowded city on the rise. At high tide, even the Thames River was backing up, further exacerbating the issue. In 1859, Joseph Bazalgette, the chief engineer in the city came up with a master plan. Within six years, would construct a 3600 km underground and street sewer system that, through the force of gravity, would be intercepted before it ever hit the Thames. These new sewer lines would be carried into new embankments, thus ultimately, eliminating cholera from the city by separating the toxic sewage from the clean drinking water.

Answer: Residential schools

Assimilation efforts on the native peoples of Canada began as early as the 17th century upon the arrival of French colonists in New France. Initially, this assimilation process was a failure and the establishment of boarding and day schools was cancelled by missionaries in the 1690s. As these missions spread their way across what is now present-day Canada, a new interest in the assimilation process began. Following the War of 1812, the Indigenous people were no longer considered an asset to the government, but rather, a barrier to settling permanently across the country. A new system of assimilation had to be established.

By 1834, the Anglican Church of Canada established what would become the oldest continuously-running residential school in Canada; the Mohawk Institute Residential School. Between 1834 and 1996, a total of 130 residential schools had operated across Canada. In 1931, at its peak, 80 schools were continuously running at one time. These schools had been set up in every province and territory except for New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The effects of these schools was catastrophic. They were mainly set up far distances from Indigenous communities and reserves to prevent children from learning their traditional customs.

The final school to close was the Gordon Residential School in Saskatchewan, shutting down for good in 1996. There have been estimates that over 150,000 children attended these schools. It would not be until 2008 when a formal apology was given by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The results were catastrophic. Entire generations of children faced abuse at the hands of the administrators and teachers. Many of the teachers were not properly trained to do their jobs. Students suffered from malnutrition, poor living conditions and disease (specifically tuberculosis). Sadly, it is believed that 3,000 and 6,000 children died as a result of attending those residential schools.

Answer: Fire

By the 1830s, the Great Lakes system, the Mississippi system and a new system of railroads allowed for a prosperous trade system in the Northern and Midwest mainland states. Some of the main industries in this area were stockyards and slaughterhouses used to supply food to cities in the region. At the time, the city of Chicago, Illinois, was growing but was still surrounded by farmland.

In 1871, a system of extreme hot and dry climate conditions contributed to ongoing hazards that the Chicago Tribune referred to as "fire traps". As firefighters had successfully extinguished a major fire in the city on October 7, 1871, no one could have quite predicted what was to come next. As the story goes, a cow on the Catherine and Patrick O'Leary farm knocked over a lantern setting their barn on fire. This time, the fire department was slow to respond, most likely due to exhaustion, and when ready to take charge, were sent to the wrong address. What ensued was the Great Chicago Fire.

Reports suggest that rooftops were ablaze, wooden bridges destroyed and flames leaped onto nearby ships. The entire downtown area of Chicago was destroyed, churches and an opera house were gutted, and martial law was brought into effect. The fire resulted in over 100,000 people being left homeless in the city, a death toll of between 120-300 people and over 17,000 buildings burned or destroyed. Chicago was rebuilt with financial assistance from U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and improved construction methods along with stricter fire codes were brought into the city.

Answer: Western Union

In the 1850s, Western Union started building its long line of telegraph lines from the east coast of the United States to the Mississippi River. The first transcontinental telegraph opened around 1861, and the Western Union Telegraph Company was worth over $40 million by the mid 1870s. Obviously, this system relied on Morse code rather than verbal speech. By the mid-1870s, a race was on to see who could patent the telephone first.

Alexander Graham Bell beat out another inventor, Elisha Gray (considered to be the father of the music synthesizer), having his patent granted on March 7, 1876. In 1877, the Bell Telephone Company offered to sell its patent to Western Union for $100,000, which they declined. This declination is considered one of the greatest commercial mistakes (disasters) in American business history. Western Union's president, realizing he had actually made a bad decision, was once claimed to have said later that if he could acquire the patent for $25 million, it would have been a "steal".

Although Western Union purchased other telephone patents from Thomas Edison, Elisha Gray, and Amos Dolbear, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed Graham Bell's patent to be superior and Western Union was forced both sell their phone patents and to get out of the telephone business altogether. Bell's telephone company would become the America's largest corporation going into the 20th century.

Answer: Dutch East Indies

Between 1800 and 1949, the country we know today as Indonesia was a Dutch colony called the Dutch East Indies. On the afternoon of August 26, 1883, the Krakatoa volcano erupted with such force that it was reported that it could be heard as far away as Mauritius and Western Australia. The sound wave is estimated to have traveled the globe at least seven times over. The damage caused from this powerful eruption was so catastrophic that it destroyed over 70 percent of the island of Krakatoa and most of the surrounding Krakatoa archipelago.

Over 1,000 people alone were killed in the Sumatra region and all residents (roughly 3,000) on the island of Sebesi were killed. The impact of the explosion caused various tsunamis that hit areas as far away as South Africa. The original settlement of Merak in the Java region was destroyed as a result of a 40m-high tsunami wave. It is believed that most of the 2,700 inhabitants lost their lives. In all, estimates suggest that over 36,000 people worldwide were killed as a result of Krakatoa's power.

Answer: Sitting Bull

The Battle of Wounded Knee is deemed by many to have been one of the greatest atrocities with long-term consequences in the history of the United States. The incident at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, resulted in the senseless deaths of 25 U.S. soldiers and over 150 Sioux members (most of which were women and children). A decision had previously been made to break up the Lakota people that were already living on a reserve and to give this land to the locals. The Lakota would then be moved to live on farms.

While on those farms, children would be educated at white schools and practice Christianity. The intent was to erase their culture and outlaw their customs and traditions. A similar system of residential schools was used in Canada to assimilate the Indigenous peoples there. This was done in 1890 with the support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

The result of the Battle of Wounded Knee put the final nail in the coffin for maintaining any traditional customs. The American government established its system of confining the Native Americans to smaller reserves. Generations would lose their traditional ways of life.

Answer: A garment factory

At the end of an overtime shift, the women at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan, New York City, would be victims to one of the deadliest factory fires in the early 20th century. Most of these women were immigrants of Italian and Jewish descent and earned far less in wages than the average American citizen. At around 4:40 pm on March 25, 1911, it is speculated that combustible materials and a cigarette may have caused the spark that triggered the fire. The 25+ buckets of water that were on the eight floor of the building did little to combat the fire.

By the time the fire department had arrived, there were bodies scattered on the ground outside the building. So much so that they prevented the horse-drawn engines from getting close to the burning building. To make matters worse, the main escape route had been locked to prevent employee theft. In all, 146 people were killed because of the fire, many of whom had jumped to their own death. Elevator operators Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo recalled the incident stating that many of the girls they tried to rescue by taking the elevators to the eighth and ninth floors had smoldering hair and clothing from the fire. Blood ran down the sides of the elevator. At one point, they were fitting up to 40 workers in an elevator that only accommodated 10 people. Eventually, the operators would need to stop their rescue attempts as the elevators became inoperable.

Compensation was eventually paid out to 23 of the families affected by the fire. This would be a turning point in United States labour policy. As a direct result of the fire, health and safety laws would change in New York City, specifically related to factories and factory workers. It was discovered that over 200 factories in the city were at risk of having a similar fire. Fire sprinkler systems, fire alarms and better fireproofing became mandatory in factories across the city. More importantly, new legislation regarding work hours and working conditions for women and children were put in place. Factories could no longer lock their doors when employees were still inside the building.

Answer: Sinking of the RMS Titanic

Millvina Dean was merely two months old when her family boarded the RMS Titanic as third-class passengers. Her parents had decided to leave the United Kingdom and head to the United States as her father was expecting to work a new job (a tobacco shop that he would co-own with his cousin). On the night on April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic would collide with an iceberg. Dean, her brother and her mother were all brought to and placed in Lifeboat 10. This lifeboat would be the sixth boat to be lowered into the water and would launch with approximately 40 occupants to be rescued, all of different classes including first-, second-, and third-class passengers.

Millvina's father was never rescued from the ship, and it is believed that if his body was recovered, it was never identified. Millvina's family opted to return to the United Kingdom after her mother realized her father had been lost. Millvina went on to have a successful career as a cartographer and a civil servant. She refused to watch films related to the Titanic disaster (specifically James Cameron's film of the same name) after she claimed to have had nightmares after watching the 1958 film "A Night to Remember", a docudrama film about the final night of the sinking of the Titanic. She passed away in May 2009 at the age of 97 and was cremated. Her ashes were spread in Southampton at the launch site where the Titanic set sail.