Starting with one of the most-known and talked-about tragedies in Human History, on this day in 1912, the British luxury passenger liner Titanic sank en route to New York City from Southampton, Hampshire, England. After striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage, some 1,500 people died due to a lack of lifeboats. This catastrophe sparked a global discussion on seafaring practices and marked a turning point in naval safety.
Over 70 years later, in 1989 on the same day, a tragedy occurred at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest during an FA Cup semi-final.
After police realized that fans would not be able to enter the stadium before kick-off due to congestion, they opened up a supplementary gate. As fans rushed into the pens, a deadly crush resulted. With 97 deaths and 766 injuries, it has the highest death toll in British sporting history.
Then in 2013, Boston, Massachusetts, was hit by disaster when two homemade bombs were detonated in the crowd of spectators near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 were wounded in the domestic terrorist attack.
After an intense manhunt, police captured one of the bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose older brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with law enforcement. In 2015, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty by a jury of all 30 charges against him and is currently held in the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Colorado.
15 April 2019, the historic Notre-Dame de Paris caught fire during a restoration campaign. The fire department fought the flames for more than 15 hours, but by the time the fire was extinguished, the cathedral’s spire had collapsed, most of its roof had been destroyed, and its upper walls were severely damaged.
