50 Great Disasters Made Worse by Human Folly

human folly fol-ee] noun definition: 1. Lack of good sense, understanding, or foresight 2. An act or instance of foolishness. 3. A costly undertaking having an absurd or ruinous outcome. If there is one thing about human beings that you can count upon, it is our tendency to make a bad situation worse. Owners and builders take shortcuts when constructing a building, and it collapses, killing those inside. Operators take bribes to load more passengers on a ferry than it can hold, and it capsizes, with the death toll in the thousands. Nightclub owners fail to follow basic fire safety guidelines, and hundreds burn to death. Nuclear and chemical plant operators fail to follow basic operating procedures, causing huge areas to be contaminated and poisoning thousands. Storage tanks are not engineered properly; hot-shot pilots fly too low; crowds are incited to riot and stampede; and tons of munitions are stored in heavily populated areas. And then when disaster strikes . . . other people pay the price for their folly. Relive fifty of history's great disasters made worse by human greed, ignorance, emotion, and lack of common sense, including the Great Molasses Flood, the Beer and Pretzel Stampede, a cyclone that gave birth to a new nation, and an earthquake that led to genocide.

Mr. King holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in History, Geography, and Social Studies Education. He lives with his wife and family in suburban Madison, Wisconsin. He loves to research and re-tell the stories of obscure and nearly forgotten historical events, and to create new alternative-history stories.