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Author Janis Thornton reveals the stories of a day in Indiana like no other.

Palm Sunday 1965 started as the nicest day of the year, the kind of weather that encouraged Hoosiers to get out in the sun, fire up the grill, hit the golf course, or roll down their car windows and take a leisurely drive. That evening, however, throughout northern and central Indiana, the sky turned an ominous black, and storms moved in, quickly manifesting as Indiana's worst tornado outbreak. Within three hours, twisters, some a half-mile wide, ripped through seventeen counties, devastating communities and leaving death and destruction in their wake. When the tornadoes were finished with Indiana, 137 people were dead, hundreds were injured, and thousands more were forever changed.

The Blizzard of 1977 is still remembered in Western New York, especially in Buffalo, which received the brunt of the storm. The blizzard occurred during the most extreme cold the area had ever seen, accompanied by some of the largest winter snowfalls on record. The blizzard struck with little warning on Friday morning, January 28, 1977, and the blowing snow and extreme cold paralyzed the Buffalo area until the first week of February. The storm made travel impossible and stranded thousands of people across the region, while snowdrifts buried houses up to the second story. This is a story not only of survival, but also of community. Neighbors helped neighbors, radio stations relayed messages and provided crucial information, and countless individuals donated their time and equipment to bring needed medicine or food to shut-ins across the region.

The blizzard occurred during the most extreme cold the area had ever seen, accompanied by some of the largest winter snowfalls on record. The blizzard struck with little warning on Friday morning, January 28, 1977, and the blowing snow and extreme cold paralyzed the Buffalo area until the first week of February. The storm made travel impossible and stranded thousands of people across the region, while snowdrifts buried houses up to the second story. This is a story not only of survival, but also of community. Neighbors helped neighbors, radio stations relayed messages and provided crucial information, and countless individuals donated their time and equipment to bring needed medicine or food to shut-ins across the region

Centuries ago, Europeans desperate for gold and a route to the East found a lush, green paradise populated by native tribes in the New World.

Subsequent violence and disease all but wiped out the native population. The land nurtured Charlton Heston and Ernest Hemingway in their youths and spawned the assassin of President William McKinley. Northern Michigan also bore witness to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history, and to the bizarre kidnapping of Gayle Cook, an ill-fated attempt to save the Perry Hotel in Petoskey from bankruptcy. Author and storyteller Dave Rogers recounts these and other historical tales from Up North.

Schuylkill County is no stranger to disaster.

Schuylkill County is no stranger to disaster. Protected by volunteers since 1811, residents have faced block-burning conflagrations like the Great Memorial Day Fire of 1945, which consumed sixty-seven buildings in the Mahanoy City Business District, and commercial airplane crashes like United Flight 624 near Ashland, with no survivors. The Red Church propane truck explosion near Orwigsburg caused twelve fatalities, and the Reading Railroad passenger train collision with a gasoline truck in Port Carbon sparked death and destruction, as well as a frantic search for burning money.

Telling these stories with the help of rare and many never-before-seen images, authors and veteran firefighters Michael R. Glore and Michael J. Kitsock revisit some of the region’s most harrowing catastrophes.

Chronicling the devastating Strand Theatre Fire of 1941 and celebrating the community's heroes and resilience in the face of adversity.

On March 10, 1941, at 12:38 a.m., the Brockton Fire Department responded to Fire Alarm Box 1311, which was pulled for a fire at the Strand Theatre. Fire Alarm dispatched the deputy chief, three engine companies, a ladder company and Squad A. Within six minutes, a second alarm was struck. Less than one hour after the first alarm, the roof of the Strand collapsed, and what appeared to be a routine fire turned into a disaster that killed 13 firefighters and injured more than 20 others. The disaster marks one of the largest losses of life to firefighters from a burning building collapse in the United States.

The Deadliest Twister in U.S. History

The weather forecast for much of the Midwest on March 18, 1925, predicted “Wind and rain.” This prediction was right, but lethally inadequate. Around 1 p.m., a tornado touched down near Ellington, Missouri, and charged relentlessly for three and a half hours across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The destructive storm left schools and workplaces leveled, over 600 dead and 1,600 injured in its two-hundred-nineteen-mile wake—earning it the name, the Great American Tornado. A nation united, doctors and nurses rushed aboard express trains. The Red Cross orchestrated an enduring six-month relief campaign, and people contributed funds and condolences from around the world. Amidst the staggering ruin, volunteers, the Red Cross, and ordinary heroes like Isaac Levy spearheaded awe-inspiring recovery efforts that rivaled the powerful storm.

The fading memories of Greater Boston's Blizzard of 1978 return to life for those who experienced it and those who can only imagine.

The great blizzard of 1978 is an event seared in the memory of anyone who lived through it. Most of Greater Boston was quickly overwhelmed by the storm, which shut down all forms of transit, stranded thousands of cars and motorists along Route 128, and virtually shut down most of the state for a week. But for many coastal communities, the impact of the storm, which brought record high tides and pounding surf, was pure devastation. The common thread shared by almost everyone in the region was positive memories of neighbors and strangers helping each other and finding new bonds of community.

Greater Boston's Blizzard of 1978is illustrated with approximately 200 photographs from government archives and private collections and is told by author Alan R. Earls, who somehow managed to drive through the worst of the infamous storm.

In June 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit the East Coast with a monstrous and devastating force, bringing a deluge across multiple states and slamming four counties in the Southern Tier: Steuben, Chemung, Tioga, and Broome.

Dozens died and property damage ran into the millions as Corning, Elmira, Owego, Binghamton, and other communities suddenly found themselves under water. The flood destroyed the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, staggered the Penn Central, shut down Corning Glass Works for weeks, and devastated the Corning Museum of Glass--a major cultural resource. Lives and landscapes were forever changed when homes and businesses washed away in a matter of minutes. Henceforth, the region's history became permanently divided into the times before and the times after the 1972 flood. Through stunning images, The 1972 Flood in New York's Southern Tier chronicles the extraordinary destruction of twisted rail lines, devastated streets, exhausted recovery workers, rivers bursting their banks, cars on houses, and houses on cars

Circle City Catastrophes

Disaster was a fact of everyday life in 1800s and early 1900s Indianapolis. During the 1860s, more than 1,700 people died in what is now the Herron-Morton Place neighborhood. In 1882, ten people drowned under the Union Railroad Depot. Ropes were considered an adequate fire escape in the 1890s, but when the National Surgical Institute caught fire, they proved unequal to the task. The owners of the Prest-O-Lite Company created the world-famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but their company also had four major incidents that caused eleven deaths and destruction in the city. In 1917, Hollywood was responsible for the deaths of six people in an Indianapolis apartment building. Join Jack Finney as he explores these and other Indianapolis fires and disasters.

Join Jack Finney as he explores these and other Indianapolis fires and disasters.

Built by the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Water Works and Supply, the failure of the St. Francis Dam on its first filling was the greatest American civil engineering failure of the 20th century. Beginning at dawn on the morning after the disaster, stunned local residents picked up their cameras to record the path of destruction, and professional photographers moved in to take images of the washed-out bridges, destroyed homes and buildings, Red Cross workers giving aid, and the massive clean-up that followed. The event was one of the worst disasters in California's history, second only to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

The town of Wellington was located by the Stevens Pass summit in the Cascade Mountains. During the last days of February in 1910, the snow was relentless in the Cascades, falling as much as one foot per hour and rising up to 20 feet deep in areas. Rotary plows could not keep the lines open as snow covered the railroad tracks almost immediately after being cleared. The Seattle Express, coming from Spokane, and a fast mail train were stranded just beyond the safety of the Cascade Tunnel, where they remained unmovable for almost a week under the snow packed mountains. On March 1, an avalanche swept away the tracks and passengers aboard the two trains as well as several of Wellington's buildings and homes. Almost 100 individuals were killed in just a few seconds, creating America's deadliest avalanche and train disaster in history. Today, the site is part of the Iron Goat Trail off Highway 2, east of Skykomish. The snowshed, the abandoned original Cascade Tunnel, and various scraps of the trains left in the ravine are the only evidence that remain of Wellington, its long-forgotten inhabitants, or the disaster.

Every mass grave in Texas offers morbid proof that at one time, in that place, something went very, very wrong.

Texans have resorted to mass graves out of necessity, desperation and appalling indifference. These sites mark natural disasters or hide unnatural crimes that tested the limits of human endurance and empathy. Because of this, memorializing those who lie in mass graves can be controversial. Not everyone wants to dig up the darkness of the past, much less admit that the dirt is still fresh. Nevertheless, to honor those whose bones lie mixed with others, their stories must be told. In so doing, Kathy Benjamin exhumes essential shards of Lone Star history, from the Alamo to the present day.

Door County is the home to numerous shipwrecks of pleasure craft and steamers, on a photographic journey of the treacherous waters and those they have claimed.

Door County is the final resting place of many shipwrecks, from the first Euro American ship to sail the western Great Lakes, LaSalle's fabled Griffin that left Washington Island in 1679 never to be heard of again, to modern-day pleasure crafts that find the shallow inlets and bays hard to navigate. Door Peninsula Shipwrecks takes the reader on a photographic journey around the peninsula and back to a time of wooden ships and iron men. From Sturgeon Bay to the east coast of the peninsula to the northern islands and Green Bay, the journey encompasses early wooden sail craft to steel steamers, the brave sailors who sailed the treacherous waters, and the heroic lifesavers who rescued them.

Human action made one of the worst natural disasters in Indiana history even worse. Indiana and the Great Flood of 1913 reveals how this happened and how to avoid a similar fate in the future.

Indiana suffered enormous losses in the Great Flood of 1913, yet this disaster is largely forgotten. The combined tornado and flood barreled through Terre Haute, killing more than twenty. One hundred fourteen miles away in Peru, the circus lost most of its animals in the storm. At the southwestern corner of the state, a "sea of water,'? as local papers put it, washed over Evansville turning streets into canals. In the capital, levee failures left hundreds homeless and vulnerable to disease and famine. Pulling from archival photographs, newspapers, and local accounts, Dr. Nancy M. Germano shares stories from across the state to reveal how Indiana's history of settlement and development contributed to one of the state's worst disasters.

For more than five centuries, the waterways surrounding Long Island have profoundly shaped its history.

Familiar subjects of lighthouses, shipwrecks and whaling are found alongside oft-forgotten oddities such as Pan-American flying boats landing in Manhasset Bay in the early days of transatlantic flight. From the British blockade and skirmishes during the American Revolution to the sinking of merchant vessels by Germany in World War II, the sea brought wars to these shores. By the later part of the 20th century, Gold Coast millionaires commuted in high-speed yachts to Manhattan offices as the island's wealth grew. Historian Bill Bleyer reveals Long Island's nautical bonds from the Native Americans to current efforts to preserve the region's maritime heritage.