The Great Thames Disaster

The Great Thames Disaster
Author: Gavin Thurston
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1965
Genre: Bywell Castle (Steamship)
ISBN:

The wreck of the steamboat Princess Alice, 3 Sept. 1878.

The Princess Alice Disaster

The Princess Alice Disaster
Author: Joan Lock
Publisher: Robert Hale
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2014-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0719816726

The collision of the Princess Alice pleasure steamer with the Tyne collier, Bywell Castle, in the Thames in September 1878 resulted in Britain's worst-ever inland waterway accident. Almost 650 Princess Alice passengers and crew died. Whole families were wiped out; many children were left orphans; parents childless. The nation wept. Joan Lock describes vividly the lead up to the accident, the disaster itself and its aftermath. She then delves into the quarrels that the tragedy devolved into, as each side blamed the other during the extended inquiries to discover just how the accident happened and why so many people drowned. In the process, the author makes a startling discovery...

Harold Snipperpot's Best Disaster Ever

Harold Snipperpot's Best Disaster Ever
Author: Beatrice Alemagna
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-08-02
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780500652503

Harold Philip Snipperpot is turning seven years old. He's never had a real birthday party. His parents are too grumpy. But this year is going to be different. Thanks to an amazing man named Mr. Ponzio, something incredible is going to happen on Harold's birthday - and it's going to be absolutely extraordinary. Full of surprises, every animal imaginable, and magical moments galore, Harold Snipperpot's Best Disaster Ever is a rumbustious exploration of the ways in which good things can emerge from disaster.

Shipwreck

Shipwreck
Author: Sam Willis
Publisher: Quercus
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782065229

Shipwrecks have captured our imagination for centuries. Here acclaimed historian Sam Willis traces the astonishing tales of ships that have met with disastrous ends, along with the ensuing acts of courage, moments of sacrifice and episodes of villainy that inevitably occurred in the extreme conditions. Many were freak accidents, and their circumstances so extraordinary that they inspired literature: the ramming of the Essex by a sperm whale was immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some symbolize colossal human tragedy: including the legendary Titanic whose maiden voyage famously went from pleasure cruise to epic catastrophe. From the Kyrenia ship of 300 BC to the Mary Rose, through to the Kursk submarine tragedy of 2000, this is a thrilling work of narrative history from one of our most talented young historians.

Great Planning Disasters

Great Planning Disasters
Author: Peter Hall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 1982-03-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0520046072

"Wide-ranging, significant, and readable...It will earn respect in non-academics as well as academic circles. A first-rate job."—Lloyd Rodwin

Death in the Air

Death in the Air
Author: Kate Winkler Dawson
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0316506850

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes. All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left. The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows? The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

Rescue of the Bounty

Rescue of the Bounty
Author: Michael J. Tougias
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1476746656

From the author of the Fall 2015 Disney movie The Finest Hours, the “thrilling and perfectly paced” (Booklist) story of the sinking and rescue of Bounty—the tall ship used in the classic 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty—which was caught in the path of Hurricane Sandy with sixteen aboard. On Thursday, October 25, 2012, Captain Robin Walbridge made the fateful decision to sail Bounty from New London, Connecticut, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Walbridge knew that a hurricane was forecast, yet he was determined to sail. The captain told the crew that anyone could leave the ship before it sailed. No one took the captain up on his offer. Four days into the voyage, Superstorm Sandy made an almost direct hit on the ship. A few hours later, the ship suddenly overturned ninety miles off the North Carolina coast in the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” sending the crew tumbling into an ocean filled with towering thirty-foot waves. The coast guard then launched one of the most complex and massive rescues in its history. In the uproar heard across American media in the days following, a single question persisted: Why did the captain decide to sail? Through hundreds of hours of interviews with the crew members and the coast guard, Michael J. Tougias and Douglas A. Campbell create an in-depth portrait of the enigmatic Captain Walbridge, his motivations, and what truly occurred aboard Bounty during those terrifying days at sea. “A white-knuckled, tragic adventure” (Richmond Times-Dispatch), Rescue of the Bounty is an unforgettable tale about the brutality of nature and the human will to survive.

The Great Explosion

The Great Explosion
Author: Brian Dillon
Publisher: Penguin Ireland
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Explosions
ISBN: 9780241956762

"In April 1916, shortly before the commencement of the Battle of the Somme, a fire started in a vast munitions works located in the Kent marshes. The resulting series of explosions killed 108 people and injured many more. In a remarkable piece of storytelling, Brian Dillon recreates the events of that terrible day - and, in so doing, sheds a fresh and unexpected light on the British home front in the Great War. He offers a chilling natural history of explosives and their effects on the earth, on buildings, and on human and animal bodies. And he evokes with vivid clarity the interaction of human imperatives and the natural world in one of Britain's strangest and most distinctive landscapes - where he has been a habitual explorer for many years. The Great Explosion is a profound work of narrative, exploration and inquiry form one of our most brilliant writers." --Jacket flap.

Great Medical Disasters

Great Medical Disasters
Author: Richard Gordon
Publisher: House of Stratus
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0755147081

Man's activities have been tainted by disaster ever since the serpent first approached Eve in the garden. And the world of medicine is no exception. In this outrageous and strangely informative book, Richard Gordon explores some of history's more bizarre medical disasters.