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Hyatt Regency hotel -

On July 17, 1981, in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, a walkway collapsed at a Hyatt Regency hotel. A flawed design was to blame.

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Hyatt Regency hotel -

The engineers responsible were charged with gross negligence, incompetence, misconduct, and unprofessional conduct. They were acquitted, but their employer Jack D. Gillum and Associates lost their engineering licenses in several states and membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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Hindenburg disaster -

On May 6, 1937, the German airship caught fire and crashed in New Jersey, United States, killing 36 people.

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Hindenburg disaster -

The disaster was caused by an electrostatic discharge. There was also a hydrogen leak, so the spark was enough to start the fire.

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Titanic -

The sinking of the supposedly "unsinkable" ship on April 14, 1912, will forever remind us of our human hubris. A series of factors contributed to the ship's sinking that fateful night, including several design flaws.

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Titanic - For instance, the iron plates holding together the steel plates towards the bow and the stern were too weak, allowing the ship to rip apart too quickly after colliding with the iceberg.

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Space Shuttle Challenger -

When the shuttle flew apart on January 28, 1986, it took seven lives with it. The well-known disaster involved a failure of the O-ring that sealed the shuttle's rocket booster.

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Space Shuttle Challenger -

According to the official report, "the failure was due to a faulty design unacceptably sensitive to a number of factors."

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Chernobyl disaster -

The most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history occurred April 25–26, 1986, near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, north of Kiev, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

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Chernobyl disaster -

The cause of the accident is said to have been a flawed reactor design and poorly trained employees, according to the World Nuclear Association.

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The Leaning Tower of Pisa - The tower was built on unstable soil made of mud, sand and clay. The monument has undergone a number of interventions throughout the years, and remains one of Italy's biggest attractions.

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill -

In 2010 there was an explosion on a BP drilling rig. This was the largest spill in history and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the United States. A defective cement job was the main culprit.

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Charles De Gaulle Airport - In 2004, the roof of Terminal 2E at Charles De Gaulle Airport in France collapsed.

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Charles De Gaulle Airport -

This was due to an engineering mistake, as essentially the roof was not strong enough to hold the heavy metal pillars.

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The Vasa - The Swedish warship was so heavily armed and poorly designed that it sank shortly after leaving Stockholm harbor in 1626.

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Banqiao Dam -

In 1975, a combination of poor design, poor maintenance, bad construction, and a typhoon (illustrated) contributed to this Chinese dam breaking. 230,000 people died and around 11 million people had to relocate.

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Tacoma Narrows Bridge, United States -

In November of 1940, strong winds caused the bridge to oscillate excessively and as a consequence, collapse. This was clearly an engineering mistake.

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Quebec bridge collapse, Canada -

This bridge collpased twice: first in 1907, and then again in 1916. This was due to preliminary calculations not being properly checked during the early planning stages. Essentially, the bridge was way over its carrying capacity, which led to the devastating disasters.

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Quintinshill rail disaster -

May 22, 1915 saw one of the worst rail disasters in Britain. Two signalmen took the blame, but there are suspicions that they were covering up for the railway.

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St. Francis Dam, United States - Civil engineer William Mulholland, ignored warning signs such as cracks and leaks during inspections. The dam burst in 1928, killing over 450 people.

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Space Shuttle Columbia - A broken piece of foam eventually hit a wing and caused the shuttle to disintegrate when reentering the Earth’s atmosphere on February 1, 2003.

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Bhopal disaster - In 1984, a gas leak at the Union Carbide Facility in Bhopal, India, claimed thousands of lives. Faulty equipment design and poor maintenance played a major role.

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Skylab - The first space station operated by the US was designed to go up in space, but not to return to Earth. However, in 1979 debris fell, hitting mostly the Indian Ocean and Australia.

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Apollo 13 - An oxygen tank exploded just two days after Apollo 13 was launched. The astronauts eventually managed to return to Earth safely.

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Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion -

On October 20, 1944, liquefied gas leaked into the sewer and mixed with the sewer gas and air. The result was a catastrophic explosion, and over 130 people died.

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SS Sultana - One of the Sultana's boilers exploded and the steamboat sunk. Approximately 2,400 people were on board and about 1,700 of them died.

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Apollo 1 -

Apollo 1 caught fire during a preflight test in 1967. Three austronauts died. 

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Atlantic Telegraph cable -

The first Transatlantic telegraph cable was a failure. Poor design and handling compromised the insulation of the cable, resulting in failure.

See also: Fatal technology disasters that went down in history

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