fascinatinghorror

The White Lund Explosion

In this video I touch on the toxic jaundice suffered by munitions workers during the First World War. One effect of it was to turn their skin yellow, leading to them being given the nickname of “canary girls”.

It’s a story that’s quite reminiscent of 2023-12-12 11:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post

The Sinking of the Lusitania

As with many disasters, there are a few stories about people who – at the very last minute – decided not to board the doomed ship. One that I found particularly interesting is a story concerning a woman named Alta Piper, daughter of the famous psychic medium Leonora Piper.

Alta...

The Man Who Spared Hitler

One piece of evidence that supports this story takes the form of a painting. Italian artist Fortunino Matania produced a painting from a photograph that featured Henry Tandey carrying a wounded soldier. Here’s that painting:

2023-12-01 11:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post

The Aggie Bonfire Collapse

As you might expect from such a long-held tradition, there’s a lot of history around the Aggie Bonfire. One thoroughly memorable footnote (that I couldn’t find space for in the video) concerns the many attempts through the years to light it up before it was due to be burned.

Sc...

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

In the video I mention that many insurers only paid out claims relating to damages caused by fire, not damages caused by the quake itself. One exception to this was Lloyds of London. In the aftermath of the disaster one of their head underwriters, Cuthbert Heath, sent a cable from London which sa...

The Deadly Manchineel Tree

A manchineel might be one of the deadliest fruits on the planet… but we do still have some indications as to what it tastes like. Here’s one account I found<...

A Brief History of Asbestos

I’ve lived in some pretty old buildings in my life, some of which were built around the peak of asbestos use in the UK.

The house I lived in as a child, for example, was built in the late 1800s. There was asbestos in the roof of the garden shed (which we never used) but no asbestos in the...

The Clutha Helicopter Crash

In some footage of this disaster you can see Search and Rescue dogs brought in to look for survivors in the aftermath of the disaster. During my background reading I happened to stumble across a story about one of these dogs.

2023-11-07 11:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post

The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

I mention a couple of the most common theories about Poe’s death in the video… but there are plenty more out there that are worth considering. This article gives a ...

Lost in the Grand Canyon (Part One)

While researching this story (using the excellent book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers) I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on one specific detail: would drinking tadpole-infested water be bad for your health?

It’s difficult to find a...

The Farmington Mine Disaster

While researching this story I came across a video which features an interview with two of the miners who survived the explosion. You can view it on Wikipedia here. It’s q...

The Blood-Shooting Horned Lizard

As is often the case when I cover an unusual animal in a Short, the horned lizard is suffering from population decline. While they’re excellent at defending themselves against four-legged predators, they haven’t yet developed a defence against the kind of habitat change or destruction that’...

The Chase Train Collision

In this video, I mention that one of the cars making up the Colonial was older than the others. This was, in fact, a “heritage” car – something that was a feature of some Amtrak train services until as recently as 2019.

2023-10-17 10:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

United Airlines Flight 811

In the video I mention that, when this accident took place, Captain David Cronin was just about to retire. I was curious about what happened to him after Flight 811, and so did a little digging to see where he ended up.

He did indeed retire shortly after the disastrous flight, but his perfo...

The Rockwood and Company Chocolate Flood

One of the sources I used for this story was this newspaper extract from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It’s well worth a read… especially as it also includes another story o...

The 2003 Northeast Blackout

There are so many unique stories from this event that I didn’t have space for in the main video. Here are just three (somewhat lighter) stories that I really enjoyed. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more in the comments of the video!

First, there’s 2023-10-03 10:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Deadly Coincidence: The Elizabeth Plane Crashes

There’s one interesting tangent to this story that I wasn’t able to find space for in the video – the crashes form the background for an award-nominated work of fiction by author Judy Blume. Judy Blume normally writes for children, but her 2015 novel In The Unlikely Event was aimed...

The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy

The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy is credited with inspiring a contemporary horror film. Robert Eggers – producer and director of The Lighthouse (2019) lists the tale as one of the influences that helped him bring the film to life. If you’ve watched the film you’ll know that the plot c...

The Doodlebug Disaster

Doodlebugs have pretty much disappeared from our railways now, apart from a few that are maintained for heritage purposes. There are still diesel-powered engines in use in some countries, but they’re generally not referred to as doodlebugs. As such it’s safe to say that the doodlebug, as a me...

Drowned in Ale: The London Beer Flood

I’ve now covered three different unusual floods – the other two I have in mind are the Boston Molasses Flood and the Dublin Whisk...

The Sólheimasandur Plane Wreck

The wreck of the plane is certainly very Instagram-friendly… and, like many famous Instagrammable landmarks, it’s a bit of a contentious subject. People are often seen climbing (or even skateboarding) on the w...

The Gotthard Tunnel Fire

In this video I briefly mention the Gotthard Base Tunnel – the most recently-constructed tunnel to pass under the Gotthard Massif mountain range. What I didn’t mention is that this impressive feat of civil engineering also had a very impressive opening ceremony.

2023-09-05 10:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post

The Story of Elmer McCurdy

I mention that McCurdy was a rather incompetent bank robber… but it’s worth emphasising just how incompetent he was. As well as blowing up safes (rather than blowing the doors off), his final heist saw him board the wrong train. Rather than getting away with £400,000 in cas...

The Donora Death Smog

Locals were complaining about the pollution from the mills for many years before and after the deadly smog. Here’s an extract from one letter penned by a woman na...

The Story of Bushman's Hole

One of the most interesting sources I used for this story was the website DeepCave.com – a site that, in large part, was created and maintained by David Shaw himself. It chronicles some of his diving adventures, i...

The Insane and Deadly Lunge Mine

Lunge mines are mostly consigned to history… but they have made an appearance recently in the videogame Battlefield V (published in 2018). In the game they’re a rather tricky weapon that c...

The 1996 Crash of TWA Flight 800

While looking into the background of this disaster, I was surprised to find that this is not the first time a Trans World Airlines Flight 800 has crashed. A previous accident destroyed a plane with the same flight number decades before in 1964.

The two accidents were quite different. The 19...

An Introduction to Spite Houses

There are dozens of spite houses around the world, and each and every one of them has a bizarre and utterly absurd story behind it. There’s a list of some of the most prominent ones on this Wikipedia page, and I�...

The General Slocum

While the sinking of the General Slocum never received as much attention as the sinking of the Titanic a few years later, it was nonetheless a huge event at the time. News of the tragedy reached around the world.

The classic novel Ulysses by James Joyce is set the...

Raymond Briggs's Darkest Work

Of course, I’m going to use this space to recommend that – if you haven’t already – you give both The Snowman and 2023-08-04 10:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post