Disasters Of The Century | Season 4 | Episode 10 | Knickerbocker Theatre Collapse | Ian Coulson 

Thanks Annie for sharing your personal connection to this story. We always love people who let us know when they had family members who were involved in these disasters. Thanks for watching.

My Grandmother used to say that she hoped it wouldn't snow whenever we went to the movies, even in the summertime. That always baffled me, but now I know why.

Thanks for adding to the story.

Interesting...thanks for this extra info.. I am more of a music girl, but love knowledge

Was the film possibly NITROcellulose?

@@Syclone0044 ...and you have to keep it in refrigerated storage. Paramount studios lost most of their archive this way.

@@Syclone0044 yep same thing they make ping pong balls out of. 3 times as flammable as paper

Ironic! Nonetheless very interesting information.

They are historical so I would say yes, but you would have to confirm with your school board.

@@BadDayHQ ... we have spoken to the principal of the school in the past and he told us as long as there is facts and educational information it's all good ... most importantly he's learning something on his own time 😃😃

Haven't finish the video yet and wanted to write just what you wrote. Some would say he didn't knew what happens to those people but back in those days kids learnd early on what death is. So here another 🏅 for little hero.

No political correctness here, no blood-sucking ambulance-chasers, just gettin' the job done!

as the little boy in the video, i agree he should get a medal! Y'all need Advil just after a walk, of course they needed meds... smh

@@fryfamilyfun5487 say what?

Thanks for adding to our story.

Colleen Ross So sad, that poor boy.

It's a good thing he survived though, since he was able to help the other people who were trapped. Still, it's such a shame that a young boy lost his entire family right in front of him instantly on a night he expected to be fun and lighthearted.

Indeed- it seemed like the engineer didn’t think through the concept as much as he should have- considering the weather the area was prone to.

And more coming every week :)

I wouldn't look on the History Channel, they don't show history.

Thanks for the clarifications.

Hey Nick it’s you! Much respect to your family and your relatives Sir. What a harrowing thing to live through.

equarg any architect or structural engineer will tell you, the roof is the LEAST likely part to give way. Once a building is up, it wants to stay up. On the other hand, I've seen crews literally bang on roofs and floors trying to pull a great building down. What they replaced it with, would come down in a stiff breeze, but they're stupid enough to spend 4 mil on it.

equarg I’m a West Texas Native, and I knew. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to plan your West Texas architecture around the certainty of a ton of snowfall all the time. It’s actually a desert, believe it or not. So people often think it makes sense to plan for the common instead of the exceptionally rare. Stupid humans, I know, but there you go.

An architect is not a meteorologist. He cannot know that there is snow in the winter. Nobody told him. He had no lecture on that which would present it, reiterate it, and then test it on an exam. That's a different area of expertise. Different degree, different school, different science.

Thanks for your comment. Interesting side note.

You can't put plaques or what have you every place someone has passed

Jamey: This isn't just "someone that has passed". This was a disgusting case of corporate greed and the victims should be remembered.

ptanyuh And like she already said, expecting there to be memorials in place for every incident such as this is unrealistic. Half of every city on earth would be covered in plaques memorializing victims of a bevy of forms and causes of death from everything like a theatre collapse to a mass murders to plane crashes. If the initial structure is gone it also makes no sense. If it was still standing and preserved/restored, then it would be logical to place some sort of memorial or plaque there.

Clarrisani ‍ There are many places that put up plaques memorializing those who have died in a catastrophic event so I don't know what this bitch is trying to say. It's sad when so many people die because of the mistake of someone else and that could be the very reason they didn't put one up. So let's forget a part of history. Sad.

@@AmberStarr911 You dont understand her basic logic that literally every city on earth would have thousands of plagues commemorating accidents when some people died by an accident? It's terrible yes, but we don't need a million plagues and memorials everytime an accident fucking happens. Trust me, you're not that special.. nobody is. This also wasn't due to "corporate greed". They did it because there was a serious lack of steel at the time due to WWI, it was a mistake that happened. Plain and simple... If that record breaking snow hadn't happened, that building would probably be standing still today, and you can't blame an architect for not calculating enough for record breaking events.. THe difference between this and other accidents that do get memorials should be apparent to anyone who isn't a moron and actually thinks about it.. Those memorials are more to preserve the incident than to preserve the idea of the people who died, and I for one don't need a plague or memorial on every corner to remind me that people will always be stupid, greedy, self centered, and parasitic creatures as a whole, because some nameless people I have no idea who they are died in an accident... There have been TRILLIONS of humans who have died due to accidents of extreme natures through the course of human history... and there will be hundreds of TRILLIONS more in the future... To think every one of these deserves a memorial is just straight up retarded.

Thank-you for viewing

Glad you enjoyed it

Then see if you guess this connected riddle : "Hey Mr. Knickerbocker......"

LodiTX I was thinking the same thing while watching the flick. The two disasters are uncannily alike.

RagingMoon1987, Great minds, ya?

Also reminds me of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in South Korea in 1995. Again corners were cut in construction, errors were made in calculating load, and too much weight was on the roof (in this case air conditioning).

That's right. I had forgotten that. Well remembered.

Ironic, a simple miscalculation or failing to double check blueprints led to disaster, I know I'm probably in the minority but I do feel pity for the architect who designed the theater, his career was ruined and he was forced to live the rest of his life knowing that he could've prevented the disaster if he'd simply double checked the design

Wish families weren't going homeless right now. Billions of dollars sent to other countries to save them and barely any to save their own.

Thanks for your comment Kris.

See if you guess this riddle : "Hey Mr. Knickerbocker......"

Yep.....doesn't make a lot of sense

I was amazed the beams weren't bolted or attached to the wall at all

I wonder how many PhDs and diplomas it takes for an architect to learn that materials have thermal expansion and repeated mechanical cycles may lead to creeping over larger distance than the actual expansion... I guess they imagine the building works like a well oiled abstract clockwork like in their abstract virtual mathematic analysis problems, and nothing ever gets out of the ideal ordinary.

@@wesleyy2502 I think any human would be amazed by that too, except people who are in a persistent vegetative state, and architects.

They just let it sit like a childs popsicle stick bridge

Our pleasure! Lot's more coming

Hooray!! Thank you so much!!

Bad Day HQ thanks for the upload one of the people that was killed in this Joseph Beall was actually a great great grand Uncle of mine! My maiden name is Beall.

Whoa crazy kitkat I had no idea

Debbie Prokop LEARN HOW TO SPELL YOU FUCKIN GOOF

Thanks Tina.

Maybe thats because you dont have a degree. The people who have one apparently might freely lay beams overlapping only 0.1 mm over the edge, and holler in victory that Autocad and Finite Element Method told them that it's 100% correct safe and sound, because all the materials strengths are not exceeded with a tolerance.

Ok

Glad you enjoyed it

That sucks, its tragedies like these that allowed certain safety codes to be followed. They say you live you learned but thats no true. Usually people die so we can take things seriously

You see tragedy in terms of your own tribalism. Sad and pathetic.

Thanks for adding to our story.

Welcome aboard!

Welcome back! Glad you're to see you Equarg!

Thanks for watching. We have not done an episode od Our Lady of Angels school fire.

Owner killed himself and so did the architect ten years apart

I dont know who to blame 🤷. The building wasn't made for that type of weather... This is why you need regulations and updated certifications.

Anna Lavransdattar I ALSO LIVED IN THE D.C. ARLINGTON AREA I DIDNT KNOW ABOUT THIS NEITHER

The theater itself was torn down years ago, a bank now stands where the theater once stood, and there's not even a plaque or anything letting people know the Knickerbocker Theater once stood there and 98 people were killed in the collapse about the only thing people remember is the snowstorm that caused the collapse: they call it the Knickerbocker Storm because of the disaster

snakes3425 pretty sad

Theres many tragedies the sweep under the rug. Have you heard of the san fran dam collapse? I live in Chicago just found out about the Chicago Iroquois Theater fire that killed 600, mostly mothers and children

Then see if you guess this connected riddle : "Hey Mr. Knickerbocker......"

Thanks, no we don't have anything on the Hope/Princeton Slide yet.

search for Hope Princeton slide in the youtube search window there are many videos there.

Thanks glad you enjoy our channel. I hope you will become a subscriber

Likely not. The weight of the snow was a major load factor.

Well obviously there wouldn’t be any danger from snow - but there will be heavy rain sometimes which could be almost as dangerous.

Perhaps a hurricane would've torn it down.

Probably not actually but he might get a medal nowadays!

The theater was showing Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.

Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford was playing

Elizabeth Finkler Hanasaki the info you need is in the description

$10.50 was a much more substantial amount of money in this time. You could get a sandwich for a quarter and coffee with it for another dime.

Everything else was cheap too - rent, utilities, food, wages, etc.

Musical-Theater, Vaudeville and in many ways the Broadway show as an entertainment form came about at that time...

Stanislav Kostarnov And music. Especially orchestral music

Probably the invention of photography.

Prostitution. I'm not kidding either.......

James Batchelor why did that comment get three upvotes? Photography isn’t entertainment. And it wasn’t a major part of the entire 19th century. Theatre is what predates film as far as art-form.

judy valencia why would you think it was necessary: you hear a collapse coming and you run. You don’t think everyone hearing the same cues are going to want to sit there. Plus if you’re wrong they jail you for causing a panic. People slow you down arguing and laughing at you. Every good reason not to.

@@corettaha7855 you're absolutely 100% right about that.

Thanks for the comment, sorry but we don't have the Iroquois fire on our list. Will keep it in mind though.

We have, check out our catalog online :)

Look up Lemans crash, 1956.