"It is both a sad and a happy fact of engineering history that disasters have been powerful instruments of change. Designers learn from failure. Industrial society did not invent grand works of engineering, and it was not the first to know design failure. What it did do was develop powerful techniques for learning from the experience of past disasters."
-- Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite back: Technology and the Revenge Effect
The Ill-Fated "Titanic" Being Docked at Belfast Prior to Her Entry in Service. Shipping Illustrated: VOL. XXXIX. - No. 494. New York, Saturday, April 20, 1912.
Titanic (1912)
NOAA: R.M.S. TITANIC 100 Years Later
St. Francis Dam (1928)
Failure of the St. Francis Dam
Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940)
Lessons From the Failure of a Great Machine
Love Canal (1978)
Love Canal Press Releases and Articles
Three Mile Island (1979)
Dickinson College's Three Mile Island web site
Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways (1981)
The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse
Bhopal (1984)
Space Shuttle Challenger (1986)
NASA's Challenger STS 51-L Accident
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (1986)
World Trade Center (2001)
Space Shuttle Columbia (2003)
New Orleans Levees (2005)
These databases are available in the Library at our Public Workstations or via our WiFi network.
