The Ocean Ranger Sinking

In February 1982, the Ocean Ranger was conducting drilling operations for ODECO off Newfoundland. The Ocean Ranger was a self-propelled oil-drilling platform that was capable of operating in 1,500 feet of ocean water and drilling to a depth of 25,000 feet. Built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan ...

2023-06-20T10:39:09-04:00November 18th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|2 Comments

The Hartford Center Collapse

On the evening of 18 January 1978, nearly 5,000 spectators watched a basketball game in the three-year-old Hartford Center. It was the jewel of an urban renewal program in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and boasted the largest single span of roof ever lifted into place as a complete unit. The roof was an engineering marvel ...

2023-06-20T10:41:54-04:00October 28th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|18 Comments

The Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill

In 2008, the energy company BP received a permit to drill a subsurface oil well in the Gulf of Mexico called the Macondo well. For this project, BP chartered the 10-year-old rig Deepwater Horizon from its owner, Transocean. Halliburton was responsible for cementing work ...

2023-06-20T10:43:59-04:00September 23rd, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|6 Comments

The Baldwin Hills Dam Disaster

Constructed during and immediately after World War II, the Baldwin Hills Reservoir was intended to provide a reserve supply of safe water for people living in the Los Angeles area in case of emergency. The dam, built between 1947 and 1951 by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ...

2023-06-20T10:48:12-04:00August 26th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|2 Comments

Collapse of the Willow Island Cooling Tower

In the 1970s, power companies began building many new coal-fired electrical power plants in the Ohio Valley to feed the growing industry in that region. These power plants were close to coal mines, so the electricity they generated was less expensive than nuclear or hydroelectric ...

2023-06-20T10:53:42-04:00May 27th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|11 Comments

The DuPont Buffalo Plant Explosion

It should have been a day of routine maintenance on November 9, 2010 at the DuPont plant in North Tonawanda, New York. Tank 1, which normally contained 10,000-gallons of polyvinyl fluoride (PVF), a slurry used in manufactured countertops, had been cleaned and inspected in preparation for repairs ...

2023-06-20T10:57:05-04:00March 25th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|7 Comments

The Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster

In 1981, the shuttle Columbia became the first to successfully reach space. From 1981 to 2003, Columbia carried dozens of astronauts on missions, spending a total of 300 days, 17 hours, 40 minutes, and 22 seconds in space. Columbia’s last flight was STS-107, a 16-day research mission ...

2023-06-20T10:47:46-04:00February 25th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|5 Comments
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