The St. Francis Dam ruptured five days after cracks were noticed, killing about 450 people and destroying entire towns.
Sources
- The Worst: Stupid Engineering Mistakes (wired.com)
- https://waterandpower.org/museum/St.%20Francis%20Dam%20Disaster.html (waterandpower.org)
- http://www.genealogytrails.com/cal/la/disasterstfrancis.html (genealogytrails.com)
- https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/1928-santa-clarita-california-st-francis-dam-disaster-collapse-william-mulholland/165453/ (nbclosangeles.com)
- https://stfrancisdammemorial.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/St_Francis_Dam_for_ASCE_Press3020-compressed.pdf (stfrancisdammemorial.org)
More in History
- The 1890 U.S. census classified people of African descent as black, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon, defining "octoroon" as anyone with one-eighth or any trace of black blood, and counted 6,337,980 blacks, 956,989 mulattoes, 105,135 quadroons, and 69,936 octoroons.
- The Lwów School of Mathematics was a group of mathematicians who worked in the city of Lwów (present-day Lviv, Ukraine) during the interwar period.
- India conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1974.
- During WWI, Germany's African colony surrendered two weeks after the war ended in Europe—colonial troops received the armistice news late and fought until November 25, 1918.
- Ancient Egypt began using arithmetic, algebra, and geometry for taxation, commerce, trade, and astronomy shortly after Mesopotamia did, around 3000 BC.
- King Hammurabi posted a legal code containing 282 laws around 1750 B.C.