Famous Disasters Trivia Quiz

Answer: Good Friday

One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in North America, registering 9.2 on the Richter scale, the Good Friday earthquake struck Alaska on March 27, 1964. The quake claimed 131 lives.

Answer: Hydrogen

Germany used hydrogen to lift the massive airship because the United States would not sell them any helium. Though hydrogen is lighter than helium, it is also highly flammable, a factor in the Hindenburg's demise at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937.

Answer: Chicago

On May 25, 1979, one of the wing-mounted engines of an American Airlines DC-10 fell off the aircraft as it took off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The plane crashed shortly afterward, killing 273 passengers and crew and two people on the ground.

Answer: Lake Superior

The largest of the Great Lakes is also the gravesite of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank during a fierce storm on November 10, 1975. Twenty-nine people lost their lives in the disaster.

Answer: Thresher

An attack submarine with the capacity to stay submerged indefinitely, Thresher met its end off the coast of Cape Cod while trying to achieve its maximum operational depth of 1,000 feet. A total of 129 souls, including a contingent of civilians on board to observe the trials firsthand, lost their lives in this disaster.

Answer: Boston

In one of the most unusual structural failures on record, a giant steel tank holding about two million gallons of molasses ruptured on January 15, 1919, in Boston's North End. The flood of molasses that swept over the area killed 21 people.

Answer: Ohio and West Virginia

Completed in 1928, the Point Pleasant Bridge, nicknamed the Silver Bridge for its glistening steelwork, carried traffic from Kanauga, Ohio, to Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The bridge collapsed during rush hour on December 15, 1967, claiming 46 lives.

Answer: Vladimir Komarov

After guiding Soyuz 1 through a harrowing emergency reentry, Komarov lost his life on April 24, 1967, when the spacecraft's parachute became fouled in its shroud lines. The capsule crashed into the ground, killing Komarov instantly. Gargarin died March 27, 1968, when an aircraft he was testing crashed near Moscow. Dobrovolsky died with two other cosmonauts on June 30, 1971, when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft lost cabin pressure on reentry. Leonov returned from two highly successful space missions, becoming the first man to walk in space in 1965 and serving as the Soviet commander of the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission in 1975.

Answer: Galveston, Texas

One of the worst natural disasters in American history, the 20-foot storm surge from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico washed over Galveston Island on September 8, 1900. The heavy loss of life has been blamed on the lack of accurate weather forecasting technology.

Answer: Bhopal

The toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed thousands of people and left thousands more injured or permanently disabled.

Answer: Vladivostok

Although there were no injuries, the Sikhote-Alin meteorite fall over Vladivostok is noteworthy because it occurred near a populated area. It was also the second cosmic impact to affect Russia during the twentieth century, following the Tunguska fireball of 1908.

Answer: Johnstown

The Johnstown Flood occurred when the South Fork Dam, completed in 1853, failed. The flood on May 30, 1889, killed over 2,000 people.

Answer: Bomber

A Consolidated B-25 Mitchell bomber, en route from Bedford, Massachusetts, to Newark, New Jersey, struck the 79th floor of the Empire State Building after getting lost in thick fog. As it was a Saturday, the casualties were limited to 13 persons, including the crew of the plane and workers in a Catholic relief office.

A second accidental aircraft crash occurred on Wall Street the next year, under similiar circumstances, killing only the five people aboard that plane.

Answer: Kobe

The images of the Kobe earthquake included massive fires, collapsed buildings, and uprooted highways. Over 5,000 people lost their lives in this disaster, which once again prompted Japanese officials to review earthquake safety in their building codes.

Answer: England

A fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor north of Liverpool, England in October, 1957 spread radiation throughout the countryside, irradiating the milk of cows in the vicinity. Although no one died as a direct result of the fire, at least 13 people died of thyroid cancer during the years after the accident. At the time the incident was largely 'hushed up' by the British government.