Debris from the storm of 1900 stayed piled up for decades. Following WW2, soldiers coming back from the war used this lumber to build houses for themselves. I grew up in one of those houses near Dickinson Bayou which is a tributary that empties into Galveston Bay. Well, it was actually two of those houses put together. The wood was so mineral laden that we had to pre-drill before sinking any nail or screw into the ship lap, beams, and floor joists.
I wished the Tri-State tornado would have been mentioned. I knew three people who survived that event when they were children. The amazing thing is that all three said they remembered the event like it just happened. The detail they went into was proof of how that disaster-affected them.
3:50 one of the main reasons was that the chief Weather Service meteorologist for Galveston, Isaac Cline, had been very vocal in the years prior about his belief that Galveston Island was immune to hurricanes thanks to the shallow waters off the coast. The hurricane that proved him wrong spared him, but killed his entire family.
As a native of Wisconsin, this video reminded me of the Peshtigo fire. I visited its small museum when I was a child and learned it happened on the same day as the great Chicago fire and has been over-shadowed for that reason. It is estimated 1,300-2,500 people died, but all records were destroyed so it is hard to determine. I love your channels and wonder if it would be a good fit somewhere! Thanks for all the facts for me to binge :)
My maternal grandmother died in December 1918 in Havre, Montana from the flu. She left behind 4 children (my mother was the oldest at 7 years). My grandfather deserted the family, leaving the kids alone. My great grandmother arrived to visit her newest granddaughter who had been born in November and found the kids alone and hungry.
The Johnstown Flood led to a "temporary" tax on liquor in Pennsylvania that is still in effect 84 years later. That tax in fact is nearly double the original 10% at 18%! Politicians have apparently learned that 'new' taxes can get them voted out of office, but adjustments in uses or rates of existing taxation is too boring to get the mobs to break out their pitchforks so the flood tax lives on past the lives of nearly anyone it was originally established to provide temporary relief to.
I think that tax is from a later 1936 flood in Johnstown, PA. Johnstown is surrounded on all sides by mountains and in a natural bowl, so there have been several floods in that city. My grandparents lived in that area, so one year when I took the bus into Latrobe for Thanksgiving, we passed the lights of Johnstown that evening and you could see how much of a valley Johnstown is in from the lights.
In an effort to NOT talk about the subject, I want to say that I love the “Chapter” labels for the different stories. That’s a really nice, professional touch. Tell your editor clone to keep that shit up.
Same day, not just the same week. 300 died in Chicago and 1200 are known to have died in Peshtigo with a possible 1000 more that they are unsure of. In fact, William Ogden, first Mayor of Chicago and major developer and landholder there owned a huge timber stand and sawmill in Peshtigo so he saw both sides of his life go up in flames. He paid his Peshtigo employees until a new sawmill was built and had relief supplies shipped in. He is a huge hero in Peshtigo.
I think the Chicago fire was really part of the much more widespread Peshtigo fire. I read a book about the fire and there was mention that the RAF and US Military studied the mechanics of the firestorm as part of their plans to bomb Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden during World War II. These bombings were retaliation for the German attack on Coventry which showed similar firestorm characteristics to Peshtigo.
Hey I know you and the production crew are super busy but all your channels are not linked in the "channels" section of your shows. I know this could definitely help the newer channels get the same viewership as Toptenz and today I found out so I thought I'd give you the heads up.
Abe Lincoln once said of General Mclellan, "he's got the slows". Mclellan took too long to act on anything and Antietam was his greatest victories. He was replaced by General Burnisides - he had monstrous sidebuns . . . .
1889 we didn’t need fema, we had neighbors and charity. 1936, Pennsylvania had an idea - let’s create a liquor tax to ‘help Johnstown’... Still in effect.
You didn’t mention the Galveston grand raising. That could easily be a mega project but given everything it could just be a side project. The whole great flood, the story of the nun who sadly dragged the orphans tied to her to their deaths and many other stories about the event would make a geographics episode. The aftermath with so many men forced to deal with the bodies at gun point and booze, the floating coming back to shore after being buried at sea, even Clara Barton came to Galveston to aid. The eventual raising of the entire city was a monumental affair that those who couldn’t afford to raise their two story homes merely had them become single storied and odd lower floors eerily peaking out from under the newly made porches. This is a story I’d love to hear you talk about as you’ve danced around it.
An interesting, and sobering, fact about the Storm of 1900 that was not mentioned. Prior to the hurricane making landfall, Galveston was the largest city in Texas. After the storm blew through, Houston suddenly found itself the largest Texan city. In part this was because some in Galveston and the surrounding areas fled north into Houston, but also in part because so many folks in Galveston had perished during the storm and its after effects. One can still feel the legacy of those lost souls to this day by walking along the sea wall or strolling near the port.
Two of my grandfather's brothers died from the "Spanish" flu in 1915-1918. The older of the two, who was 22, got his WWI draft notice on his deathbed. The other brother was 19. Grandpa was 8.
Back about 2007 or so we had a week of temperatures in excess of 103°. In some areas that's an every-summer thing, but I live in western Oregon where most summer temperatures are between 85° and 90° and rarely get hotter. A lot of homes aren't air conditioned (like ours) and there was a veritable black market in air conditioners. I heard about one truck driver who had a load of air conditioners that he was trying to deliver to a local home store, and he was mobbed.
1:10 no Simon, I am pretty sure they called it Spanish Flu not because they reported the cases accurately, but precisely bcs they reported them at all and the combatant countries did not bcs of not wanting to lower morale
@@sriyasodharmma4021 Spain was the only country reporting deaths regularly, it's not because they were the first. General consensus is that covid-19 originated in Wuhan, China, and nobody has ever disputed that. Is there an actual purpose to labeling it cHiNa fLu or kUnG fLu aside from appeasing your corny boomer sense of humor? I can't see any.
@@sriyasodharmma4021 being funny isn't why trump started calling it that, trump doesn't do anything if it isn't serving himself. It was simply a lousy attempt to deflect attention from his poor handling of the problem within the United States. I just don't see how thousands of Americans dying every day warrants coming up with "funny" nicknames for the virus.
I was hoping to see the Texas City Explosion in here to. But with only 500 to 600 killed it may not have been deadly enough despite being the most deadly industrial disaster in the USA.
The Battle of Antietam resulted in fact in far more deaths than the 3.5 thousand cited, that's approximately the number of Americans that died during the battle, on November 17 (if we count the confederates as Americans, which we shouldn't, a more accurate description would be "2,108 brave American Patriots as well as 3,281 treasonous confederate rattlesnakes"). But thousands more died as a result of wounds received during the battle in the following days, bringing the total to 7650 (according to the National Park Service). Also, Lincoln was disappointing by general McClellan, he thought (and was probably right) that his over-caution was the reason why the battle ended in a tactical draw rather than in a major victory for the Union.
Can you do a video on the Sun Valley resort in Idaho? Everyone has heard about it but nobody knows how cool it used to be, considering that the first ski lift in the world was built there
"with no vaccine or antibiotics to treat secondary infections control efforts were generally focused on quarantine and isolation as well as personal and public hygiene initiatives and limiting public gatherings!" Almost EXACTLY what the Greek government is still doing, probably because the health care system was left, for years, to "rot away", in an effort to privatize it more cheaply.
Simon, an additional issue regarding the Spanish Flu revolves around COAL use and Industrial Pollution. The flu mutated due to the excess carbon providing a safe haven breeding ground for the flu virus which would otherwise not survive prolonged periods outside of a body. There was a recent study on this a couple years ago, since the actual virus is alive and well and pathologists were wondering why it isn't killing as many people.
Great video. Would like to see Hudson yards in nyc as a “project “. The Vessel attraction there had recently become notorious for people jumping to their deaths from the structure
How about the "refounding" of San Diego by Alonso Horton? I grew up in a town called Hortonville that he founded in WI on his way out west, and it has always interested me.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and went to see the Johnstown flood area. We learn about it in school as one of the examples of the mega wealthy not caring about the lives of others and getting away with it.
The weather bureau on Galveston Island in 1900 was manned by brothers Isaac and Joseph Cline. They hailed from my home county--Monroe County, Tennessee. Sad, sad story. If you get a chance, read Eric Larsen's ISAAC'S STORM. Isaac Cline's wife, pregnant with their fourth child, drowned in the storm, and Isaac lived a widower for fifty-five years. 😢
Spanish Flu originated on a pig farm in Kansas in 1916/17 and was transmitted to US soldiers on there way to the European trenches. And yes that took a lot of research to find!!
Fun fact about the san fran earthquake and fire, a man named general funstun shelled san Francisco during the fires, hes from iola Kansas, we have a museum of him
Glad to see the Johnstown flood here. Grew up couple hrs away, and hearing stories of the flood. Its taught that it was caused by poor maintenance and cheap owners who didn't want to pay to fix its problems for years before the flood happened.
After watching the bit about Steele, ND having a record temp of 121F (Yikes!), my interest was piqued, so I decided to look up the highest temp ever recorded in the US, and it was (no real surprise here) Death Valley, CA, which hit 134F in July, 1913. I mean, yeah it's Death Valley, heat is expected there, but I never imagined it would be that extreme!
At 1:29 he says that 500 Mil people were infected, 50-100 Mil died, or “25% of the global population” -That 25% figure is the infection rate (global pop. in 1918 is ~1.8 Bil) but the phrasing makes it sound like 25% of the global population died.
The video is only partly accurate regarding the Johnstown Flood. The dam was originally built by the State of PA in the 1840's and sold to the Hunting and Fishing club in the 1880's. The clogged spillways were received by the club in the deteriorated condition and they were the most important reason for the failure, although the topping of the dam was also a factor. The dam was topped in order to provide room to create an access road to the lodge. The debris piled at the stone bridge ignited due to friction and was held together by barbed wire from the flooded out barbed wire factory. The lawsuit was properly decided based on jurisprudence at the time which held that the owners had to have committed knowing and gross negligence to be held responsible and they pointed out that if the record-setting rains had not occurred there would have been no problem with the dam, and how were they to anticipate a storm that had never happened before. This led to the adoption of the doctrine of absolute negligence which says that 'if you own it and it breaks, then you own the problems, too--regardless of what you did or failed to do'. That doctrine explains how product liability lawsuits are upheld even though users employ the product against instructions.
The story goes that Carnegie and Frick never spoke again after the flood, and that Carnegie Hall in NYC was built because of the guilt that Carnegie felt from the devastation he allowed to happen ...
One of the most disgusting aspects I remember reading about the SF quake was that they never included the Asian casualties in the numbers of dead. That fact stuck with me for years.
The last bit is why I hate insurance companies. They take your premiums for 50 years, then when it's time to pay up "it's an act of God" so NO we won't. Crooks
Thing is, you’re a desert on most of the land mass. We’re a giant wheat filled plain. Your country gets hot, it apparently burns. Ours does? All of our food dies, then burns. Yet, we’re convinced global warming is fake.
irish national childrens hospital maybe a mega project as it will be the most expenive hospital in the world and it is still under constrution delay after deley budget over runs
