20 TV Tragedies That Happened LIVE 

Hi there WatchMojo. Big fan ❤

Yes, I was job hunting the day of the Challenger disaster. I was at work when the towers were hit. Everyone stopped working and we were all glued to the news on radios. I don't think at that time news outlets had websites. Anyway, I cried for a week.

Yes. Challenger explosion, the guy who got blown up with the collar on his neck, Dale E.

Dear watch mojo If you are a Gen X You know and have seen every one of these events happen

I had just finished afternoon shift in my cold storage job and went to my local pub in Bankstown Australia and was watching the TV and they interrupted the broadcast to go live to New York and showed the first tower on fire and said that a plane had flown into it, i knew straight away it was no accident. When someone asked me what happened i told them that terrorists had just attacked America not long after the second plane struck the other tower they looked at me and said how did you know I said it was just too hard to believe in modern times that a large jetliner could accidentally hit a building.

I didn't hear about the folks jumping until I was quite a bit older, and I think that's because my folks purposely kept the info from me.

@@m3rrys0ngstr3sssame

@@ChristyTina22 that's was so beyond horrifying. What had me freaking out was when the other buildings kept collapsing. I kept wondering when/if it was going to stop. It was utter madness.

@@m3rrys0ngstr3ss definitely for the best. I was 18 that year. I still get a gut wrenching feeling when I think about certain details.

Seeing people jump and hearing their bodies hit the roofs of buildings around them still haunts me today

Yeah the show just went on

Technically Owen's death doesn't count for this list since & I quote.... "Twenty of the most shocking things that ever occurred on live television." Vince & co got rid of all footage of his fall.

No one saw that.

The fall wasn't on TV. Just the sound and the aftermath.

There's footage of it but it's on titan towers in the video tape vault it says " don't look at or don't copy

@DontDelete-fp8oy thief and liar

@DontDelete-fp8oy yes you are

​@@jimbo9208 exactly. Also when it comes to him , it's sad how he has to accuse others in his profile pic with a lie. Besides it also proves how obsessed he is with someone else.

@DontDelete-fp8oy 🤐 And your comments/replies being deleted should are YOU being the one who is bullying others and not us Seems they are finally action against you In the meantime... GROW UP

​@DontDelete-fp8oy no one is crying except you. It's a fact that you can't even handle being called out for bullying. Quit being so miserable

That's awesome! 😻

You mean the riots that were started because the police killed someone? 😬😬

I got married then too! Married in Utah on the 25th, headed to LA for our honeymoon the next day. There were ZERO lines at Disneyland 😂

Because it's all about you.

Fails to mention he worked in station, never on the field 😂

To answer your question - no the guy did not survive. The police and public nearby tried their best, but his burns were too extensive to survive.

@@warailawildrunner5300 Thanks for the heads up

Additionally, the Bradford City stadium fire came just only a few days before the tragedy at Heysel.

they was very lucky. if that stand had had barriers to stop pitch invasion they would have been counting the dead in the 1000's it went up so fast

This is the one many people seem to misremember. The match was in the third tier of English football and while cameras were there to record the match to show highlights later the match wasn't broadcast live and there was no live feed back to the TV studios. The bulk of the fire was filmed and then the video tape(s) was transported by car from Bradford to Yorkshire Television headquarters in Leeds where it was processed and made available to both national ITV and the BBC.

4th grade during the Challenger explosion. Saw most of these shown here too. They forgot Ruby Ridge, The North Hollywood shootout, The 1997 Jarrell, Texas F5 Deadman Walking tornado, The Boston Marathon bombing, The OJ Simpson Police chase & Trial, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Columbia shuttle breaking up in the atmosphere, and so many more.

We Gen X’ers have seen a lot…..

Gen X in the house.

Gen Jones in the house (we're the last push of the Boomers from 1954 to 1965). I saw most of them except Christine Chubbock and Dwyer and Earnhardt (because two were local tv stations and only aired the news of deaths afterward and I never ever watched NASCAR races). What about JFK though? That was a tragedy. Watched most of 9/11 except the initial response to the first tower being hit but saw everything after that point. I've got a question for @wadewilson8011 - how was the Fall of the Berlin Wall or the OJ Simpson Bronco Chase a tragedy? Just asking...

@echobeachpeach767 I'm a baby boomer, born in 1950. I saw JFK and RFK killed, the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, Apollo 1 exploding on the launch pad, hurricanes (I live in Texas) Carla and Katrina, the explosion of Challenger, too many school shootings, the debris of Columbia crossing overhead I saw live, and of course, 9/11. The longer you live, the more tragedies you will see. But the longer you live, the more advances you will see. Personally, I would love to live long enough to see humans walk on Mars to match my seeing men on the moon. I saw the building of the Berlin Wall, and also it being torn down. I've seen huge advances in medicine and technology. Try to concentrate on the positives.

TIL Thank you.

@@alinepeed7167 ❤️

Depression is toxic and can be fatal unfortunately!😣💔

I watched the movie they made about her, and I am so glad that therapy methods have come a long way in 50 years

Same thing happened to me that day but in Puerto Rico.

I was a sophomore in high school and saw it in the classroom too. In Oregon where I still reside. I remember feeling shocked all day it was almost like an out of body experience. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

@@theoriginalbunnygirl I know the feeling too. I was speechless & shocked.

My teacher ignored the announcement, and made us get back to work

I was a senior in high school and our whole school had the tvs tuned in to the news immediately after the first plane hit. We weren’t a very big school, but I look back and wonder what they were thinking, were they trying to give 750 teenagers ptsd all at the same time… because that’s how you do it 😐

My mom woke me up after the second plane hit. I wasn't working that day and I ended up just watching TV all day.

I was working at a McDonald's and some came through drive through and said we where underattck

It wasn't just shocking in the U.S... But also worldwide. I know because I was at a school in Puerto Rico when the 9/11 tragedy happened. The teacher somehow find out about it & immediately turned on the classroom's TV. The ENTIRE classroom watched it occurred live. I was speechless & shocked, especially since I was born in New York.

@@redred222 geez. What a way to find out.

@@ARTSONICFAN990 sorry. Sometimes we forget how much of an effect it had on other countries too.

I was home from work with pneumonia and high as a kite on cough medicine when the first plane hit. I honestly thought I was imagining it, because I knew it wasn’t a movie. My daughter was part of the baby boom that happened the next 11 months.

@@ReesieandLee It wasn't a movie, it was an episode of "The Lone Gunmen"

I was working phone surveys and a friend of mine was on the dayshift, he was talking to a guy in a high-rise in NYC. The guy said a plane just flew into the trade towers and he was leaving his building NOW!

I remember Hillsborough, called up my mum to ask if brother was at the game she said he had a ticket but needed to work so missed out, i told her to watch the telly, i sat with tears streaming down my face, but also relieved. that night in the bar was very quiet people was in shock then the news came on total silence untill cops said that word and the anger started. took years for the truth still waiting on justice. oh a month ago a major supermarket had to issue an apology for selling the (skum) newspaper in a Liverpool branch J4T97 YNWA

I was born two years after Hillsborough, but as a lifelong Liverpool fan I grew up knowing all about it. When the courts cleared the fans of any wrongdoing, I was at work and I just shut myself in the stationery room and cried. May the 97 rest in peace

@@philiprice7875 He had such a lucky, lucky escape. There was a 15 year old boy who survived his family's destruction when the plane hit by going across the road to borrow a bicycle pump to test out his sister's Christmas present. Poor guy had to go live with an aunt and uncle and never really recovered psychologically and came to a sad end I'm afraid, we always think of him as Victim 271. In amongst all the horror when these things happen, there is also the people who put themselves into danger to try to help others. The 2 Firecrews that set speed records on the motorway driving from Merseyside to Lockerbie (I'd say in the Cumberland Gap days that would be a bit under 3 hours driving legally, it's about 2 and 1/2 hours now), Firefighters, Police and forensic teams that came from across the country just because they felt they could be useful and the hospitals that mobilised with people airlifted to Aberdeen and Birmingham - which are a long way away. The Catholic Priest with a drink problem who gave 32 of his neighbours on Sherwood Crescent Last Rites 3 days before Christmas claiming that God was working through him that night and healed his illness. Weird little detail is the street was trashed taking most of the fuel tanks which were mostly full, but his house stood proud. In the end 11 died on the ground and 259 on the plane, if the plane had been in the air about 30 seconds longer, it would have hit Dumfries and given the urban area with all the adjoining villages is about 55,000 now, that's a lot more dead. Or the redoubtable ladies of the Women Guild who stepped up to help execute the emergency shelter that was opened in the Academy and sidelined into becoming "the women who washed". They found out that next of kin were receiving personal items in less than ideal conditions, so through the local MP (who was a proper old gentleman) got the Crown to release the items so they could be laundered and given to the families in freshly prepared packages with hand-written notes in them. Their President ended up the local Councillor and the unofficial spokesperson for the town on disaster matters. There's actually a play written about them. The Scottish government decided to send the Libyan intelligence operative Abdelbaset el-Megrahi convicted of the attack in a historically unique trial conducted on a Dutch Air Force Base which was temporarily declared part of Scotland for the occasion, back to Libya for "compassionate" reasons. We were NOT impressed. He got a heroes welcome. We were livid as you can imagine. There were a LOT of people in Dumfriesshire wishing a lot of bad things on Kenny MacAskill (who is also one of Alex Salmond's allies). And if anything at all came out of the horror of that match-day, the whole process of crowd management, incident management when things go wrong and training for incident command teams was transformed so something like the breakdown in command and control and the overcrowding that caused it, literally can't happen again. We all just wish it hadn't happened in the first place.

Fkn too late then.......

An urban legend. Not one of his convictions has been subsequently overturned.

@@kimberlymiller8274 I do not think that is correct. In fact I just took the 10 seconds to check. You are wrong. Stop spreading lies. You deserve to have your phone smashed.

According to multiple reports: "All posthumous appeals made by Dwyer's lawyers on Dwyer's behalf were denied, and his convictions were sustained."

No, but what did happen is some of the witnesses against him confessed to lying and falsifying evidence. Which, although not 100% proof he was innocent, does make a case that he could have been.

I don't usually remember anything, I'm hopeless. But I remember being stood in an Argos (popular retail outlet here in the UK) and they have TV's on display and the every channel was showing the Twin Towers live as it unfolded. The whole shop, customers and employees just looked on in complete and utter shock and disbelief. It's like time stood still and anything that anyone was doing just didn't matter a single bit. It's something I shall never forget and I can't even imagine what it must be like for anyone caught up in it.

@@CraigNiel The news was broadcasted worldwide, including the UK. That shows how shocking that attack was.

@@ARTSONICFAN990 Indeed, and like I say, it was so shocking that I've never forgot where I was. But it wasn't just that, it was the vibe that was in the air that you could feel with everyone as they watched it unfold. I've never experienced that before or since.

Yes! I was expecting my third child and caring for my 2 sons and one of their friends. I sat all the boys down to watch what I thought was going to be a fun experience for a bunch of little wanna be astronauts 😢 Not so much

I was in grade 9, skipping class so I could watch the launch in the library.

I remember watching it live... it was jarring for sure. I was in 6th grade and one of my teachers had applied for that. We were upset that he didn't get picked but we were glad after what happened. It was really sad.

Poor dog burned up in the truck....

I personally saw the debris from the Columbia disaster as it streaked across Central Texas. At first, we didn't know what it was, but found out quickly. I saw Apollo 1 blow up on the launch pad, and the Challenger disaster. I've always been fascinated by space. I was in Junior High watching the motorcade of JFK when he was shot and High School when RFK was killed. At 74, I've witnessed a lot of tragedy over my lifetime. A lot of history, as well.

I remember it like it was yesterday and probably always will. Sorry you were so affected and wish you the best.

@@lisaanderson3549 thank u so much. I appreciate it.

I pray he divorced that witch.

Wow!

Daddy?

​@@somebodyelse93239/11 happened in 2001

@AlexRising_ I’m sorry you were put through three days of absolute hell. I hope that woman was immediately divorced. She doesn’t deserve to be married.

I was in fifth grade and every classroom in our school was watching the launch live on television. It was shocking, tragic, and all the teachers in our school could be heard either screaming or crying immediately in reaction. Later in life I watched, again live on television, as 9/11 occurred. Unfortunately tragedy is part of life but with the advent of television and now social media many things will now be caught live so millions if not billions will see these events.

You used to be able to find a lot of these things on RU-vid individually but most have been taken down over the years

This video was kind of useless. It could have been just audio with no visual images at all. Describing a tragedy.

Well there's so much coverage on 9/11 if you're interested.

Ridiculous.

You really would not want to see them live . I in my 60's have watched most of these incidents , they were so tragic you don't want them seared in to your brain forever seeing the tragedy and it's aftermath . You never will get it out of your mind . So sad ,so innocent lives cut short. Someone else 's loved ones never coming home.

There were a lot of people who thought it was a single engine cesna at first as well. Especially when the reports were just of the first tower and a plane. It was just a plane hit the tower nobody mentioned it was a passenger plane.

So sad. 😢

Yes. People always talk about the Challenger but forget about Columbia

I saw the Columbia debris live as it shot across Texas.

​@@PhysicalMediaPreventsWea-bx1zm and Apollo 1...

I was in a laundromat getting my clothes out of the dryers, and had my Walkman on my head. CBS news came on and announced Columbia exploded. My first thought was " not again". I just stood there for a couple of minutes just in shock.

The health care system didn't "cause him to do what he did." Mental illness did.

@@purselmer5931 and lack of mental HEALTH CARE is what led to this.... derp a derp One would think that it wasn't necessary to add the "mental" part of "health care" because the term "health care" is all inclusive, but here we are.

@@RiftRavingRogue There is absolutely no way to know if proper mental health care would have stopped this from happening. There are PLENTY of people who got proper mental health care who then off themselves anyway. Also, who's to say that he wasn't getting proper mental health care? And that is preposterous about "health care" being all-inclusive. Even health insurance distinguishes between the two and when talking about pro-choice issues, it's considered a "WOMEN'S" health care issue. And prostate cancer is a "MEN'S" health care issue. Nothing wrong w/adding an adjective to be more descriptive.

Depression is bs just another way dr get money out of you

@@ernie734 and you have a medical degree ? No ? ...

I remember watching a memory video of little kids and one child was crushed in the tsunami or he drowned, I can't remember. Another child was in a twin tower when they got hit and she too died.

I'll never forget that big smokey "Y"

Not all of them.

Cops aren't cowards. They are human, and they have their breaking points, but most cops do risk their lives selflessly to preserve the safety of others a LOT more often than you or I likely do, so, let's be a little less quick to judge, and WAY less quick to develop prejudice, bias, and stereotypical thinking.

​@@BrowncoatGofAZthis has "a few bad apples" energy. If your defense is "not all cops are x" that should be a hint that you might be on the wrong side of the issue.

@@penteractgaming not necessarily. He’s implying that all cops are cowards, which isn’t true either. I’m not gonna say that this could’ve gone differently, but throwing away police isn’t the answer.

Some are.

I saw the Tohoku Quake live, too. I had gone to Japan the year before with a university club and, thus knew people living there. My mom was up with me flipping channels as I was finishing up some art homework when we saw the tsunami come in. I thought it was archived footage until my mom pointed out the 'LIVE' banner up in the corner. Needless to say, I didn't get back to my homework for awhile afterwards. My friends were safe and now I live in an area that had been affected by it. Have felt some of the biggest aftershocks from it, too.

I remember that! I was scared that it was gonna become another Chernobyl

@@HarryPotter87 I had the exact same thought. Especially when The US Navy told everyone to evacuate the area around the plant.

4 reactors did melt down. And blew up. By far the worst nuclear Incident the world has experienced.

​@@jacobsirois7585wrong, cherynobl was far worse, it released over 200 times the amount of radiation, there was an in core explosion unlike fukushima which were external to the core, 28 people died within 4 months of cherynobl and none died at fukushima, you really shouldn't make comments like that when you clearly don't know the facts

Uhh, did you not watch the video...

It was literally in this vid.

Does it come to mind because it’s featured in this video? Guess you didn’t watch the video before commenting on it.

What time is it though? NVM just found it. 13:38

@@thalaseamyst3934 It’s at 13:40…..

I was 6 years old when 9/11 happened

I bet there was 1 sicko who did. 🤢 There's always 1...

is just a line they used in every video, is part of the script

I did think it was an odd thing for them to say, and yes, I know it's scripted but still....🤔

I’m from S. Louisiana & read a couple of books about Katrina. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans was horrible. Federal response was slow. So many people died & suffered because of delayed action. The whole Superdome situation was horrendous. Unfortunately it was typical Louisiana politics.

@@MoogieB federal response had to be arranged in advanced but never was, FEMA has never intended to be a first line, that is the state government's job

@@MoogieBmy dad was a Louisiana National Guardsman who was helping out in New Orleans after Katrina. He said the Superdome was very chaotic & the New Orleans Saints were there but they were not very nice to either the civilians who were misplaced from their homes & had to stay there or the National Guardsmen who were there as well

What's really painful is that it didn't have to end that way. The rescue attempt failed because they broadcasted the plans on TV and never considered that the terrorists would be watching. Had they kept the plan secret, those hostages might still be alive. Likewise, had that Filipino bus-jacker's big oafish idiot brother not waddled out there and blabbed all over the place, the hostages would likely be alive. Then there's the Feds at WACO being too impatient, not listening to experts and going all gung-ho with the tanks to tear-gas everyone out. Nice job, breaking it, dummies.

That was a weird time, the sky was so quiet

Me too

we had a school mass shooting once in a place called Dunblane about 30 years ago the image i took away from that was a group of mothers standing outside the school screaming for their babies (jesus the kids was 5/6yo). after that it came a lot harder to own a gun in the UK as i said we had a mass school shooting ONCE.

@@philiprice7875 too many gun freaks here

​@@saiyanbob666never once in the history of the world did a gun commit a crime only criminals commit evil deeds

We have. The problem is that very wingnutty lawmakers and those who vote for them haven't because they fetishize assault rifles.

My dad was one of the Louisiana National Guardsmen who went to help in New Orleans. He said that the New Orleans Saints were very rude to some of the other guardsmen who were stationed at the Superdome & some of the residents who were staying at the Superdome after they were rescued from their homes

That’s how you get demonetized 😂

I was at a friend's grandparents' house when Dale died. I was playing with my friends and when we went into the basement, I saw a replay of the accident on the computer, 😢.

It’s a family channel

I saw the video of Dwyer's suicide, once. Ugh! And the camera person just stupidly ZOOMS in on his corpse's face as he slumped down, with that bug-eyed expression and bloody ooze coming out of his nose! NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THAT!

I agree.

There's only one insane religion the others are mainly harmless well meaning fools!

I was thinking that as well. When he set the truck a lite he killed the dog . That pissed me off to no end.

Yeah I haven't forgotten that part and thought he was a pos for doing that to his poor dog

Yeah, he lit his truck on fire and climbed into it, planning on burning himself alive. But afterward, he chickened out and got out of the truck and shot himself in the end. But yeah, his dog was in the truck when he did that.

I was in college when it happened, it was the talk of campus. Then it turns out a lot of flaws where made that it turn into case study of what not to do in a hostage crisis. Naturally the blame game started: with the media for the intense coverage and the police for the botched attempt when no one realized the fugitive can see the entire thing because there was a tv inside the bus and then the mayor to the government This was the first black mark against the former president Aquino for so many botched events that happened in his presidency.

@@EdsBrain Then there was that brother. Nice job breaking it, brother of hostage-taker. Much had a similar blunder. The rescue failed because the perps saw it coming... because the plan was stupidly broadcasted on TV and the perps were watching it in the hotel room. I guess the West German media felt that the terrorists were these primitives who lived in caves and didn't know what TV was, or something. Then there's the Waco and Ruby Ridge messes. Going in guns a-blazzin' or tanks a-tear-gassing is not how you deal with those groups. At least the Govt. finally learned a bit and handled the Malheur Wildlife Refuge siege by Ammon Bundy and his band of idiots the right way... just wait it out and don't dignify them with much attention.