6 Disasters With Details So Awful, History Left Them Out

In the aftermath of the attack, the Marines standing guard over the wreckage reported hearing banging noises emanating from the ship's hull. It was first thought that these noises were coming from cooling metal, or salvage teams, or ghosts. But as they continued, it became clear what was truly going on: There were people alive and trapped in the wreckage. Worse still, they were doomed to stay there. Cutting a hole in the hull could flood the ship or spark an explosion. There was nothing to be done for them.

It wasn't until six months later that teams were able to raise the ship. Inside an airtight storeroom, they found the bodies of three sailors -- Ronald Endicott, Clifford Olds, and Louis Costin -- alongside piles of opened food rations, flashlight batteries, and a freshwater tank. According to a calendar that was found in the room, the men had survived for 16 days before suffocating.

Their families were told that the men died on December 7, the day of the attack itself. It wasn't until years later that the truth came out, and even to this day, monuments list December 7 as the day of their passing. Which might not be right, but man, it also kind of feels like there might not be a right answer here.

So what the fuck happened? Well, the lifeboats happened. After the Titanic, Congress enacted regulations which required passenger ships to carry enough lifeboats to accommodate every single passenger. Which was a big problem for river boats and their shallow drafts. The Eastland was already a bit top-heavy, and these new regulations forced it to go from six lifeboats to 11. Add in 37 life rafts and 2,000+ life jackets -- all of which were stored on the top deck -- and you had something which was less a ship and more a massive experiment in rudimentary physics.

In defense of the poor bastard who originally designed the thing, the Eastland was originally meant to haul 500 people, not 2,500. Makeshift, and apparently legal, modifications made it sort of stable when underway, but it was always a little tippy when loading and unloading. The mandatory lifeboats, as well-intended as they were, became sort of the proverbial straw which made the camel fall over and kill 800 people.

When we calculate the big list o' good times America has had, Hurricane Katrina isn't going to rank too highly up there. The storm and its aftermath are thought to have killed over 2,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and caused over $100 billion in damages. And those are just the fun parts that you've heard about. Meanwhile, there's a chapter of the storm no one seems to like talking about, starring some poor bastards in prison.

According to human rights researchers who interviewed inmates held in a prison called Templeman III, after the floodwaters hit, the people running this prison -- guards, administrators, everyone -- up and left, abandoning 600+ prisoners in flooded cells without food or water. For four fucking days.

According to a timeline of events pieced together by these researchers, the prisoners last reported seeing guards on August 28 -- the day the hurricane came ashore and the vast majority of city residents had fled or holed themselves up inside the paradise that was forming in the Superdome. By August 29, the prison was a lawless ghost town filled with chest-high floodwaters and -- oh, cool -- turds, thanks to a backed-up sewage system.

As is their way, the inmates took matters into their own hands, some of them managing to break out of their cells to escape the rising waters. Others, in the vain hope that someone would give a shit, hung signs out of their cells begging for help -- a sight witnessed by a correctional officer at another prison. Regardless, it took until September 1 for someone to realize that, yes, they'd accidentally Home Alone'd an entire prison, and yes, they should probably get around to rescuing them.

These weren't criminal kingpins, by the way. The vast majority of inmates in this particular facility were being held for offenses like disorderly conduct or public drunkenness -- many hadn't been convicted or even charged yet. The main inmates were being held in similar prisons Templeman I and Templeman II, both of which were evacuated almost immediately, though they didn't exactly have a great time of things, either.

Prior to the 1960s, schizophrenia was thought to be something which only middle-class women suffered, like the vapors or plodding missionary-position sex. Its symptoms, as understood at the time, matched what we'd now call depression, and it was typically chalked up to pressures related to housework and motherhood. But that all changed in 1968, with the publication of new psychiatric guidelines which reclassified schizophrenia as a disease which manifested via outbursts of ultra-violent aggression. Before, schizophrenia was treated with compassion and pity. Now, it required containment.

Guess how that turned out.

OK, we'll tell you. In the years that followed, schizophrenia diagnoses in "angry black men" skyrocketed. Moreover, a specific type of schizophrenia was suddenly discovered: paranoid schizophrenia, sufferers of which were typified as having "delusional anti-whiteness." Which sounds laughable; considering the lynching and segregation and bombings and arson and goddamned medical experimentation, it'd be delusional for a black man not to be anti-white.

The psychiatrists who changed these guidelines probably weren't being explicitly racist. But in the words of the psychiatry professor who identified the sudden trend, this change "reflected the social tensions of 1960s America." Far from being a cold, clinical decision, the new diagnosis procedures were heavily intertwined with the cultural values of the day, or at least the cultural values of white doctors, leading them to create what was essentially a modern version of "drapetomania" -- the old "illness" concocted to explain why slaves so often fled their masters.

First, the awful, if relatively predictable, misery. In the aftermath of the shooting, Carli was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. During a shift delivering pizzas, she opened a bottle of water and smelled tear gas, which triggered an episode and caused her to start vomiting. So that gig didn't last long. Soon enough, she couldn't afford to pay her insurance and car payments, all while dealing with the pain caused by some asshole's shotgun pellets that were still in her body, which she eventually sold to stay atop of her bills.

And then we get to an even weird misery. Almost every mass shooting now brings out conspiracy theorists who believe that it was faked, typically by Obama as an excuse to confiscate everyone's guns. The same thing happened with Aurora, and these "Holmies" would soon use social media to harass Carli, calling her a liar and publicity whore and government stooge, and probably some less printable things as well. Also, for some reason, Megadeth is involved.

After this was discovered, there was a considerable effort by NASA to cover up these findings. This was partially born from a desire to spare the crew's families the trauma of realizing that their loved ones didn't die instantly, but NASA may have also wanted to avoid embarrassment by not advertising how ill-prepared they were for a scenario like this. A shuttle disintegrating during launch is bad, there's no doubting that. But if the crew compartment survived that intact, a soft landing or otherwise slowed descent might have saved everyone's lives. If it was something that NASA had anticipated.

Though that was hardly the biggest fuckup this time around, considering that NASA had ignored warnings that their shuttle was about to blow up from the guys who made the damned thing. It's really only a matter of time before someone reveals that NASA also ignored warnings that the shuttle's launchpad was located directly on top of an orphanage.

When Adam isn't redefining comedy as "heartbreaking sadness," he tweets on Twitter. He also has an email address where you can contact him with comments / complaints / cute soul-redeeming animal pictures.

Also check out 6 True Stories From History Creepier Than Any Horror Movie and 6 Real-Life Horror Movies Your History Teacher Skipped Over.

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