The Worst: Stupid Engineering Mistakes

Copyright To Respective Owners St. Francis Dam, 1928 Self-taught engineer William Mulholland built this LA dam on a defective foundation and ignored the geology of the surrounding canyon. He also dismissed cracks that formed as soon as the reservoir behind it was filled. Five days later, it ruptured, killing 450 people and destroying entire towns (along with Mulholland’s career). Kansas City Hyatt walkways, 1981 Walkways crisscrossing the hotel’s multistory atrium collapsed, domino-style, raining debris and hundreds of people onto the packed dance contest below. The cause: grossly negligent design and use of beams that could support only 30 percent of the load. Vasa, 1628 Three hundred years before the Titanic, the Vasa was the biggest sailing vessel of its day. The overloaded ship ruled the seas for all of a mile before she took on water through her too-low gun ports and promptly capsized. Northeastern US power grid, 1965 A single protective relay tripped in Ontario, overloading nearby circuits and causing a cascade of outages that left 30 million homes without power for up to 13 hours. A fragile, redundancy-free design ensured that it would happen eventually. After decades of repairs and upgrades, it happened again in 2003. McDonnell Douglas DC-10, 1970s Nearly a thousand people around the world lost their lives while the kinks were being ironed out of this 290-ton competitor to Boeing’s 747. Blown-out cargo doors, shredded hydraulic lines, and engines dropped midflight were just a few of the behemoth’s early problems. Firestone 500 tires, 1970s These steel-belted radials allowed water to seep under the tread, which caused the belting to rust and the tread to separate, typically at high speeds. Dozens of deaths later, Firestone blamed consumers, then recalled 10 million tires. Purity Distilling Company tank, 1919 You gotta keep your molasses somewhere – how about a rickety tank 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter in the middle of Boston? The structure was painted brown to hide the leaks. Eventually it burst (possibly exploding from fermentation), sending waves of molasses up to 15 feet high into the city and killing 21. Skylab, 1973 America’s first space station was hopelessly damaged at launch because designers failed to account for the aerodynamics of the meteoroid shield and solar panels. When crews weren’t busy making repairs, they complained of the extreme heat on board. Citigroup Center, 1978 Last-minute changes to structural braces of this Manhattan tower left it vulnerable to collapse in high winds. With a hurricane bearing down on the city, builders rushed to strengthen it by welding 2-inch steel plates over 200 weakly bolted joints. R101 airship, 1930 Seven years before the Hindenburg disaster, the British thought 5.5 million cubic feet of hydrogen in a bubble of fabric would make for a fun way to get around. On her maiden flight, the airship’s cover was blown open by wind, and from there it was oh-the-humanity city.