Disasters & Accidents in the 20th century

1,068 sourced entries, 1900 CE to 1999 CE, oldest first. Also see Disasters & Accidents across every century or everything else in the 20th century.

• 1900March 6 – A coal mine explosion in West Virginia, United States, kills 50 miners.source
• 1900May 1 – Scofield Mine disaster: An explosion of blasting powder in a coal mine in Scofield, Utah, kills 200 people.source
• 1900June 30 – Hoboken Docks fire: A wharf fire at the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, spreads to German passenger ships , and . The fire engulfs the adjacent piers and nearby ships, killing 326 people.source
• 1900December 16 – The German training frigate Gneisenau, with 450 naval cadets on board, sinks in a storm during exercises off of the Spanish coast at Málaga, drowning 136.source
• 1901May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.source
• 1901May 24 – 81 miners are killed in an accident at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales.source
• 1901November 14 – 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster: a life-boat capsizes on service on the east coast of England during a great storm; nine of the twelve crew on board are killed. This gives ride to the lifeboatmen's motto "Never turn back."source
• 1902January 8 – A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel kills 17 people, injures 38, and leads to increased demand for electric trains and the banning of steam locomotives in New York City.source
• 1902May 12 – Brazilian aeronaut Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhão and Georges Saché, his French mechanic, are killed when Severo's airship Pax catches fire and explodes a little over 1,000 ft above Paris. Severo and Saché are both killed upon impact with the ground.source
• 1902July 10 – The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, kills 112 miners.source
• 1902July 14 – St Mark's Campanile in Venice collapses.source
• 1902August 1 – 100 miners die in a pit explosion in Wollongong, Australia.source
• 1902September 19 – Shiloh Baptist Church stampede: 115 people are killed in a crush at a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, following a mistaken alarm of fire after an address by Booker T. Washington.source
• 1902October 21 – A five-month strike by the United Mine Workers in the United States ends.source
• 1903April 29 – The 30-million-m 3 Frank Slide rockslide kills 70–90 in Frank, Alberta.source
• 1903July 29 – United States Cartridge Company explosion: The explosion of two explosives storage magazines destroys 70 homes, killing 22 residents of Tewksbury, Massachusetts.source
• 1903August 10 – The Paris Métro train fire at Couronnes results in 84 deaths.source
• 1903September 27 – The Wreck of the Old 97 Fast Mail train at Stillhouse Trestle, near Danville, Virginia, kills 11 people and inspires a ballad.source
• 1903November 28 – is wrecked on a reef outside Melbourne, Australia, causing one of the world's first major oil spills.source
• 1903December 30 – The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago kills 600.source
• 1904January 23 – The Ålesund fire destroys most buildings in the town of Ålesund, Norway, leaving about 10,000 people without shelter.source
• 1904February 7 – The Great Baltimore Fire in Baltimore, Maryland, destroys over 1,500 buildings in 31 hours.source
• 1904April 19 – The Great Fire of Toronto destroys much of the city's downtown, but there are no fatalities.source
• 1904May 15 – Russo-Japanese War: Russian minelayer Amur lays a minefield about 15 mi km off Port Arthur, and sinks Japan's battleships Hatsuse, 15,000 tons with 496 crew, and Yashima. On the same day, the Japanese protected cruiser Yoshino sinks after being accidentally rammed by the armored cruiser Kasuga, killing over 270 crew, including Captain Sayegi and his second-in-command, Commander Hirowateri. Japan will keep the loss of Yashima secret for over a year.source
• 1904June 15 – A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City's East River kills 1,021.source
• 1904June 28 – Danish ocean liner runs aground and sinks close to Rockall, killing approximately 627 people, many of whom are Russian-Polish and Scandinavian emigrants.source
• 1905January 15 – A series of three 41 m ft high tsunamis kill 61 people in Norway, after a rockslide sweeps down Mount Ramnefjell and crashes into Lake Lovatnet.source
• 1905March 14 – 23 of the 26 crew of the British barque Kyber die when the ship is wrecked off England's Land's End.source
• 1905March 20 – The Grover Shoe Factory disaster kills 58 employees in Brockton, Massachusetts, when a boiler explodes and the factory building collapses.source
• 1905April 3 – A coal mine explosion at Zeigler, Illinois, kills 50 miners.source
• 1905April 5 – The body of John Paul Jones, "Father of the American Navy", is located in Paris almost 113 years after his death.source
• 1905June 18 – A coal mine explosion in Russia kills 500 employees at the Ivan Colliery at Kharsisk.source
• 1905June 21 – New York Central Railroad's 20th Century Limited train is derailed in an apparent act of sabotage, killing 21 people.source
• 1905June 25 – The Danish Navy training ship Georg Stage is accidentally sunk in port in Copenhagen after English steamship Ancona collides with it, killing 22 teenage recruits.source
• 1905July 11 – National Colliery disaster at Wattstown in the Rhondda valley of Wales: an underground explosion kills 120, with just one survivor.source
• 1905August 8 – Fourteen employees of a department store in Albany, New York are killed when the building collapses suddenly.source
• 1905August 22 – The sinking of the Japanese ferry Kinjo Maru kills 160 people after the British ship HMS Baralong collides with it in the Sea of Japan.source
• 1905December 30 – A bomb kills Frank Steunenberg, ex-governor of Idaho; the case leads to a trial against leaders of the Western Federation of Miners.source
• 1906January 22 – The strikes a reef off Vancouver Island, Canada, killing over 100 (officially 136) in the ensuing disaster.source
• 1906March 10 – Courrières mine disaster: An explosion in a coal mine in France kills 1,060.source
• 1906October 28 – A train falls off a drawbridge in New Jersey, drowning 53 people, and results in what is widely considered the first ever press release.source
• 1906November 18 – The steamboat Dix sinks en route from Seattle to Port Blakely claiming the lives of approximately 50 passengers and crew.source
• 1907February 11 – The French warship Jean Bart sinks off the coast of Morocco.source
• 1907February 12 – The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Hamilton in Long Island Sound; 183 lives are lost.source
• 1907February 21 – The English mail steamship Berlin is wrecked off the Hook of Holland; 142 lives are lost.source
• 1907February 24 – The Austrian Lloyd steamship Imperatrix, from Trieste to Bombay, is wrecked on Cape of Crete and sinks; 137 lives are lost.source
• 1907The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt results in possibly as many as 11,000 deaths.source
• 1907The steamship Congo collides at the mouth of the Ems River with the German steamship Nerissa; 7 lives are lost.source
• 1907July 21 – The sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro, off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.source
• 1907August 29 – The partially completed superstructure of the Quebec Bridge collapses entirely, claiming the lives of 76 workers.source
• 1907December 6 – Monongah Mining disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.source
• 1907December 14 – The largest sailing ship ever built, the 7-masted U.S.-owned Thomas W. Lawson, is wrecked in the Isles of Scilly.source
• 1907December 19 – An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.source
• 1908January 13 – A fire breaks out at the Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, killing 171 people.source
• 1908March 4 – The Collinwood school fire near Cleveland, Ohio kills 175.source
• 1908April 20 – Sunshine rail disaster: A rear-end collision of two trains in Melbourne, Australia kills 44 people and injures more than 400.source
• 1908July 11–12 – The steamship Amalthea, housing 80 British strikebreakers in Malmö harbour, Sweden, is bombed by Anton Nilson; 1 is killed, 20 injured.source
• 1908July 27–28 – The 1908 Hong Kong typhoon sinks the passenger steamer Ying King, causing 421 deaths.*July 29 - The White Star Line company begins the construction of the Titanicsource
• 1908September 17 – At Fort Myer, Virginia, Thomas Selfridge becomes the first person to die in an airplane crash. The pilot, Orville Wright, is severely injured in the crash but recovers.source
• 1909January 24 – The White Star Line RMS Republic sinks the day after a collision with SS Florida off Nantucket. Almost all of the 1,500 passengers are rescued.source
• 1909July 26 – Blue Anchor Line passenger/cargo liner , on her second voyage from Australia to Britain, leaves Durban and is lost without trace with all 211 aboard.source
• 1910January 31 – A coal mine explosion at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in Primero, Colorado, kills 75 miners.source
• 1910February 1 – A coal mine explosion at the Browder Coal Company in Drakesboro, Kentucky kills 34 miners.source
• 1910February 2 – A coal mine explosion at the Palau mine at Las Esperanzas in the State of Coahuila in Mexico kills 68 miners.source
• 1910February 5 – A coal mine explosion at the Jefferson Clearfield Coal Company mine at Ernest, Pennsylvania, kills 11 miners (10 Hungarian) but another 110 are able to escape.source
• 1910February 9 – French liner General Chanzy sinks in the Mediterranean after striking rocks off Menorca, with only one survivor of the 157 on board.source
• 1910March 27 – A fire during a barn-dance in Ököritófülpös, Hungary, kills 312 people after ballroom decorations catch alight.source
• 1910July 12 – Charles Rolls becomes the first British aviation fatality when his French-built Wright aeroplane suffers a broken rudder at an altitude of 80 ft m and crashes during a contest at Bournemouth.source
• 1910December 21 – Pretoria Pit disaster: a coal mine explosion at the Hulton Colliery Company of Westhoughton in Lancashire, England, kills 344 miners, with just one survivor.source
• 1911March 25 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City kills 146 people.source
• 1911April 18 – , a 5,557-ton Portuguese passenger liner en route from Mozambique to Lisbon, strikes Bellows Rock just off Cape Point and sinks.source
• 1911April 22 – A passenger train from Port Alfred to Grahamstown, South Africa derails on the Blaauwkrantz Bridge, and plunges into the ravine 200 ft m below, killing 31 and seriously injuring 23.source
• 1911May 15 –Standard Oil is dissolved by the Supreme Court of the United States into 34 separate oil companies including Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, and others due to violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Actsource
• 1911September 25 – French battleship Liberté explodes at anchor in Toulon, France, killing around 300 onboard and in the surrounding area.source
• 1911December 9 – Cross Mountain Mine disaster: A coal mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee kills 84 miners, despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.source
• 1912April 14–15 – Sinking of the RMS Titanic: strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.source
• 1913March 7 – Alum Chine explosion: British freighter Alum Chine, carrying 343 tons of dynamite, explodes in the harbour of Baltimore, Maryland.source
• 1913c. March 1 – British steamship Calvados disappears in the Sea of Marmara, with 200 on board.source
• 1913May 9–July 11 – A major industrial strike occurs in the Black Country of England, involving 25,000 workers, and threatening preparations for World War I in naval and steel industries. The workers demand 23 shillings minimum wage.source
• 1913August 20 – After his airplane fails at an altitude of 900 ft m, aviator Adolphe Pégoud becomes the first person to bail out from an airplane and land safely.source
• 1913September 9 – Helgoland Island air disaster: The first fatalities aboard a German airship occur, when the Imperial German Navy Zeppelin dirigible LZ 14 is forced down into the North Sea off Heligoland during a thunderstorm, killing 16 of the 22 men on board.source
• 1913October 9 – Canadian-owned ocean liner , carrying passengers (mostly immigrants) and a chemical cargo from Rotterdam to New York City, catches fire in a North Atlantic gale; 136 die, but 521 are saved by ships summoned by SOS messages to the scene.source
• 1913October 14 – Senghenydd colliery disaster: An explosion at the Universal Colliery, Senghenydd in South Wales kills 439 miners, the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom.source
• 1913November 7–11 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 in North America claims 19 ships, and more than 250 lives.source
• 1913December 24 – Italian Hall disaster: seventy-three people – mostly striking mine workers and their families – are crushed to death in a stampede in Calumet, Michigan.source
• 1914January 11 – The Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, sinks after being crushed by ice.source
• 1914April 4–September 27 – Komagata Maru incident: The sails from India to Canada. Canadian regulations, designed to exclude Asian immigrants, prevent the boat from docking in Vancouver, and it is forced to return to Calcutta with all its passengers.source
• 1914August 9 – World War I: British Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Birmingham rams and sinks German submarine U-15 off Fair Isle, the first U-boat lost in action.source
• 1914British Royal Navy scout cruiser HMS Pathfinder is sunk by German submarine U-21 in the Firth of Forth (Scotland), the first ship ever to be sunk by a locomotive torpedo fired from a submarine.source
• 1914Battle of Penang, Malaya: German cruiser Emden sinks a Russian cruiser and French destroyer, before escaping.source
• 1914December 15 – Hōjō Coal Mine Disaster: A gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hōjō mine in Kyūshū, Japan, kills 687 people (the worst coal mine disaster in Japanese history).source
• 1914December 16 – World War I: Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby: Imperial German Navy battlecruisers bombard British North Sea ports, resulting in 137 deaths, mostly civilians.source
• 1915January 1 – WWI: British Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable is sunk off Lyme Regis, England, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat, with the loss of 547 crew.source
• 1915January 19 – WWI: German Zeppelins bomb the coastal towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in England for the first time, killing more than 20.source
• 1915March 11 – WWI: British armed merchantman is sunk in the North Channel off the coast of Scotland by Imperial German Navy U-boat SM U-27. Around 200 crew are lost, a number of bodies being washed up on the Isle of Man, with only 26 saved.source
• 1915British Royal Navy battleship sinks German submarine U-29 with all hands in the Pentland Firth off the coast of Scotland by ramming her, the only time this tactic is known to have been successfully used by a battleship.source
• 1915May 22 – Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland: The collision and fire kill 226, mostly troops, the largest number of fatalities in a rail accident in the United Kingdom.source
• 1915Sinking of the RMS Lusitania: 's main rival, the British ocean liner , is sunk by Imperial German Navy U-boat U-20 off the south-west coast of Ireland, killing 1,199 civilians en route from New York City to Liverpool. The best-known of the celebrities on board is American sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt.source
• 1915June 11 – Friar Leonard Melki and hundreds of other Christians are driven out of Mardin and massacred by Ottoman troops.source
• 1915July 7 – An overloaded International Railway (New York–Ontario) trolleycar with 157 passengers crashes near Queenston, Ontario, resulting in 15 deaths.source
• 1915July 24 – Steamer capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 844 lives.source
• 1915October 28 – St. Johns School fire: Fire at St. John's School in Peabody, Massachusetts, United States, claims the lives of 21 girls between the ages of 7 and 17.source
• 1916March 24 – French ferry is torpedoed by in the English Channel, with at least 50 killed (including the composer Enrique Granados), resulting on May 4 in the Sussex Pledge by Germany to the United States.source
• 1916April 22 – The Chinese troop transport capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.source
• 1916June 5 – WWI: sinks, having hit a mine off the Orkney Islands, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard.source
• 1916July 1–12 – Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916: At least one shark attacks 5 swimmers along 80 mi km of New Jersey coastline, resulting in 4 deaths and the survival of one youth, who requires limb amputation. This event is the inspiration for author Peter Benchley, over half a century later, to write Jaws.source
• 1916July 29 – Matheson Fire: In Ontario, Canada, a lightning strike ignites a forest fire that destroys the towns of Cochrane and Matheson, killing 233.source
• 1916July 30 – German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, an act of sabotage destroying an ammunition depot and killing at least 7 people.source
• 1916September 2 – WWI: British pilot Leefe Robinson becomes the first to shoot down a German airship over Britain.source
• 1916September 11 – A mechanical failure causes the central span of the Quebec Bridge, a cantilever-type structure, to crash into the Saint Lawrence River for the second time, killing 13 workers.source
• 1916October 20 – Black Friday (1916): A violent and deadly storm hits Lake Erie in the United States.source
• 1916November 21 – WWI: Hospital ship HMHS Britannic, designed as the third for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine; 30 lives are lost. At 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the war.source
• 1916December 31 – The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the United States at the time, burns to the ground.source
• 1917April 10 – Eddystone explosion: an explosion at an ammunition plant near Chester, Pennsylvania, kills 139, mostly female workers.source
• 1917May 21 – Over 300 acres (73 blocks) are destroyed in the Great Atlanta fire of 1917 in the United States.source
• 1917June 8 – Speculator Mine disaster: A fire at the Granite Mountain and Speculator ore mine, outside Butte, Montana, kills at least 168 workers.source
• 1917August 2 – Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning lands his aircraft on the ship in Scapa Flow, Orkney. He is killed 5 days later during another landing on the ship.source
• 1917August 18 – The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 in Greece destroys 32% of the city, leaving 70,000 individuals homeless.source
• 1917October 23 – A Brazilian ship is destroyed by a German U-boat, encouraging Brazil to enter World War I.source
• 1917November 24 – A bomb kills 9 members of the Milwaukee Police Department, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history (until the September 11 attacks in 2001).source
• 1917December 6 – Halifax Explosion: Two freighters collide in Halifax Harbour at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and cause a huge explosion that kills at least 1,963 people, injures 9,000 and destroys part of the city (the biggest man-made explosion in recorded history until the Trinity nuclear test in 1945).source
• 1917December 6 – WWI: U.S. Navy destroyer is torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean south west of the British Isles by German submarine , killing 66 crew in the first significant American naval loss of the war, the first ever U.S. destroyer loss to an enemy.source
• 1918February 5 – The is torpedoed off the Irish coast; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.source
• 1918March 1 – WWI: German submarine sinks off Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland.source
• 1918June 4 – RMS Kenilworth Castle, one of the Union-Castle Line steamships, collides with her escort destroyer HMS Rival while trying to avoid her other escort, the cruiser HMS Kent.source
• 1918July 12 – The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kawachi blows up off Tokuyama, Yamaguchi, western Honshu, Japan, killing at least 621.source
• 1918July 17 – WWI: (famed for rescuing survivors of the ) is torpedoed and sunk off the east coast of Ireland, by Imperial German Navy submarine U-55; 218 of the 223 on board are rescued.source
• 1918July 18 – The Cheka kill the Martyrs of Alapayevsk, six further members of the Romanov family and retainers, by throwing them down a mineshaft.source
• 1918United States Coast Guard cutter Tampa is torpedoed and sunk in the Bristol Channel by German submarine with the loss of all 131 on board, the greatest loss of life for any US combat vessel in the war.source
• 1918October 12 – Cloquet Fire: The city of Cloquet, Minnesota, and nearby areas are destroyed in a fire, killing 453.source
• 1918October 25 – The steamer Princess Sophia sinks on Vanderbilt Reef near Juneau, Alaska; 353 people die, in the greatest maritime disaster in the Pacific Northwest.source
• 1918November 1 – Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in world history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 93 dead.source
• 1918November 9 – British battleship is sunk by a German submarine off Trafalgar, with the loss of around fifty lives (the last major naval engagement of WWI).source
• 1918December 5 – Estonian War of Independence: The British light cruiser strikes a mine and sinks near Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea, killing 11 sailors.source
• 1919January 1 – HMY Iolaire sinks off the coast of the Hebrides; 201 people, mostly servicemen returning home to Lewis and Harris, are killed.source
• 1919July 21 – Wingfoot Air Express crash: The dirigible Wingfoot Air Express catches fire over downtown Chicago. Two passengers, one aircrewman and ten people on the ground are killed; however, two people parachute to the ground safely.source
• 1919August 1 – Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic collapses.source
• 1919December 21 – The United States deports 249 people, including Emma Goldman, to Russia on the USAT Buford.source
• 1920December 11 – Burning of Cork in Ireland: British forces set fire to some 5 acre m2 of the centre of Cork, including the City Hall, in reprisal attacks, after a British auxiliary is killed in a guerilla ambush.source
• 1921January 2 – The Spanish liner Santa Isabel breaks in two and sinks off Villa Garcia, Mexico, with the loss of 244 of the 300 people on board.source
• 1921January 20 – British K-class submarine HMS K5 sinks in the English Channel; all 57 on board are lost.source
• 1921March 31 – The British government formally returns the coal mines from wartime control to their private owners, who demand wage cuts; in response, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain calls on its partner trade unions in the Triple Alliance to join it in strike action, leading in turn to the government declaring a state of emergency for the first time under the Emergency Powers Act 1920. On April 1, a lockout of striking coal miners begins.source
• 1921June 28 – The coal strike in the United Kingdom ends with the Miners' Federation of Great Britain obliged to accept pay cuts.source
• 1921July 9 – Bloody Sunday (1921) occurs in Belfast, Northern Ireland with 20 killings, at least 100 wounded and 200 homes destroyed.source
• 1921August 24 – R38-class airship ZR-2 explodes on her fourth test flight near Kingston upon Hull, England, killing 44 of the 49 Anglo-American crew on board.source
• 1921September 21 – The Oppau explosion occurs at BASF's nitrate factory in Oppau, Germany; over 500 are killed.source
• 1922April 7 – 1922 Picardie mid-air collision: The first midair collision between airliners occurs, between a Daimler Airway de Havilland DH.18 and a Grands Express Aériens Farman Goliath over Poix-de-Picardie, Amiens, France.source
• 1922September 13–15 – The Great Fire of Smyrna destroys most of İzmir. Responsibility is disputed.source
• 1923July 10 – Large hailstones kill 23 people in Rostov, Soviet Union.source
• 1923September 8 – Honda Point disaster: Nine United States Navy destroyers run aground off the California coast.source
• 1924December 24 – 1924 Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.34 crash: An airliner crashes soon after takeoff from London's Croydon Airport killing all eight people aboard. This leads to the first public inquiry into a civil aviation accident ever held in the United Kingdom.source
• 1924December 24 – Babbs Switch fire: A flash fire at a Christmas celebration in a one-room schoolhouse in Babbs, Oklahoma, United States, kills 36 people, mostly small children.source
• 1925March 31 – The Bauhaus closes in Weimar and moves to a building in Dessau designed by Walter Gropius.source
• 1925May 8 – African-American Tom Lee rescues 32 people from the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman on the Mississippi River.source
• 1925September 3 – The U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah breaks up in a squall line near Caldwell, Ohio, killing 14 crewmen.source
• 1925October 4 – S2, a Finnish Sokol class torpedo boat, is sunk during a fierce storm near the coast of Pori in the Gulf of Bothnia, taking with her the whole crew of 53.source
• 1926March 6 – The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (England) is destroyed by fire.source
• 1926March 14 – El Virilla train accident in Costa Rica: 385 people are killed and 93 injured when an overloaded pilgrim special derails on a bridge. The SS Ile de france Was Launched at Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyards in Saint Nazaire, France As one of the first ships to embrace the Art Deco stylesource
• 1926April 30 – A state of emergency is proclaimed in the United Kingdom under the Emergency Powers Act 1920 on account of the "threat of cessation of work in Coal Mines".source
• 1926May 10 – Planes piloted by Major Harold Geiger and Horace Meek Hickam, students at the United States Air Corps Tactical School, collide in mid-air at Langley Field, Virginia.source
• 1926July 3 – A Caudron C.61 aircraft, operated by Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne, crashes in Czechoslovakia.source
• 1926September 21 – French war ace René Fonck and three others attempt to fly the Atlantic, in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. Before the newsreel cameras at Roosevelt Field New York, the modified Sikorsky S-35 crashes on take-off and bursts into flames. Fonck survives, but two of his men are killed.source
• 1926October 12 – British miners agree to end their strike.source
• 1926November 24 – The village of Rocquebillier, in the French Riviera, is almost destroyed in a massive hailstorm.source
• 1926December 2 – British prime minister Stanley Baldwin ends the state of emergency that had been declared due to the miners' strike.source
• 1927January 9 – The Laurier Palace Theatre fire at a movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children.source
• 1927May 17 – U.S. Army aviation pioneer Major Harold Geiger dies in the crash of his Airco DH.4 airplane, at Olmsted Field, Pennsylvania.source
• 1927October 25 – The Italian ocean liner Principessa Mafalda capsizes off Porto Seguro, Brazil; at least 314 people are killed.source
• 1927November 14 – Pittsburgh gasometer explosion: Three Equitable Gas storage tanks in the North Side of Pittsburgh explode, killing 26 people and causing damage estimated between $4.0 million and $5.0 million.source
• 1927December 17 – United States Navy submarine is accidentally rammed and sunk by United States Coast Guard cutter John Paulding off Provincetown, Massachusetts, killing everyone aboard despite several unsuccessful attempts to raise the submarine.source
• 1928April 13 – The West Plains, Missouri Dance Hall explosion occurs.source
• 1928May 24 – The airship Italia crashes at the North Pole; one of the occupants is Italian general Umberto Nobile. A rescue expedition leaves for the Pole on May 30. Roald Amundsen will be among those who lose their lives in the search for survivors.source
• 1928November 12 – Liner develops a severe starboard list, is abandoned and sinks approximately 200 miles off Hampton Roads, Virginia; estimated deaths range from 110 to 127.source
• 1928December 3 – In Rio de Janeiro, a seaplane sent to greet Alberto Santos-Dumont crashes, killing all on board. The pilot had tried to avoid another plane which came too close.source
• 1929August 29 – The collides with the oil tanker S.C.T. Dodd off the California coast, causing the San Juan to sink in 3 minutes, killing 77 people.source
• 1929September 7 – The steamship SS Kuru sank in Lake Näsijärvi near Tampere, Finland, leading to 138 people drowning.source
• 1929November 15 – Atlantic, a film drama about the sinking of the RMS Titanic, is released in the U.K. The simultaneously shot German-language version is the first sound film feature to be released in Germany.source
• 1930April 21 – A fire in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, United States kills 320 people.source
• 1930October 5 – British airship R101, the world's largest flying craft, crashes in France en route to India, on its first overseas flight, resulting in the loss of 48 lives, with six survivors. Those killed include Britain's Air Minister, Christopher Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson.source
• 1931June 14 – Saint-Philibert disaster: The overloaded pleasure craft Saint-Philibert, carrying trippers home to Nantes from the Île de Noirmoutier, sinks at the mouth of the River Loire in France; over 450 drown.source
• 1932January 26 – British submarine aircraft carrier sinks with the loss of all 60 onboard on exercise in Lyme Bay in the English Channel.source
• 1932March 14 – George Eastman, founder of Kodak, commits suicide in Rochester, New York.source
• 1932July 7 – French submarine Prométhée sinks with the loss of 62 of 69 onboard on trial out of Cherbourg in the English Channel.source
• 1932December 24 – 1932 Moweaqua Coal Mine disastersource
• 1933February 25 – Arminda de Jesus is burned for witchcraft in Soalhães, Portugal.source
• 1933February 27 – Reichstag fire: Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag building, is set on fire under controversial circumstances. The following day, the Reichstag Fire Decree is passed in response to the Reichstag fire, nullifying many German civil liberties.source
• 1933April 4 – American airship Akron crashes off the coast of New Jersey, killing 73 of its 76 crewmen. It is the worst aviation accident in history up to this date (and until 1950).source
• 1933April 5 – The International Court of Justice in The Hague decides that Greenland belongs to Denmark, and condemns Norwegian landings on eastern Greenland. Norway submits to the decision.source
• 1933June 22 – Nazi Germany outlaws the Social-Democratic Party (SPD).source
• 1933August 14 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn. It is extinguished on September 5, after destroying 240,000 acre km2.source
• 1933October 10 – 1933 United Airlines Boeing 247 mid-air explosion: A bomb destroys a United Airlines Boeing 247 on a transcontinental flight in mid-air near Chesterton, Indiana, killing all 7 on board, in the first proven case of sabotage in civil aviation, although no suspect is ever identified.source
• 1933December 23 – Lagny-Pomponne rail accident: A train collision near Lagny-sur-Marne in France kills 204.source
• 1934March 20 – The Great Hakodate Fire kills at least 2,166 people in southern Hokkaido, Japan.source
• 1934September 8 – Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner kills 134 people.source
• 1934September 22 – A gas explosion at Gresford Colliery in Wrexham, north-east Wales, kills 266 miners and rescuers.source
• 1935June 24 – Ten people, including musician Carlos Gardel, are killed in a collision between two Ford Trimotor airplanes at Olaya Herrera Airport in Medellín, Colombia.source
• 1936May 25 – The Remington Rand strike of 1936–37 begins, spawning the notorious Mohawk Valley formula, a corporate plan for strikebreaking.source
• 1936November 20 – A levee failure and continued massive rain at the Mitsubishi Osarizawa mine, Kazuno, northeastern Akita, Japan, results in at least 375 deaths.source
• 1936November 30 – A spectacular fire destroys The Crystal Palace in London, originally built for the 1851 Great Exhibition.source
• 1937February 19 – Airliner VH-UHH (Stinson) goes down over Lamington National Park, bound for Sydney, killing 5 people.source
• 1937April 20 – A fire in an elementary school in Kilingi-Nõmme, Estonia, kills 17 students and injures 50.source
• 1937May 6 – Hindenburg disaster: In the United States, the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, 13 passengers and 22 crew die, as well as one member of the ground crew.source
• 1937July 9 – 1937 Fox vault fire: The silent film archives of Fox Film Corporation are destroyedsource
• 1937November 11 – The Kogushi Sulfur Mine collapse, in western Gunma, Japan, kills at least 245 people.source
• 1937December 12 – USS Panay incident: Japanese bombers sink the American gunboat on the Yangtze in China; the United States accepts the Japanese statement that this was unintentional.source
• 1938March 3 – The Santa Ana River in California, United States, spills over its banks during a rainy winter, killing 58 people in Orange County, and causing trouble as far inland as Palm Springs.source
• 1938June 11 – Fire destroys 214 buildings in Ludza, Latvia.source
• 1938July 28 – Pan Am flying boat Hawaii Clipper disappears with 6 passengers and 9 crew members, en route from Guam to Manila.source
• 1938November 9 – Holocaust – Kristallnacht: In Germany, the "night of broken glass" begins as Nazi activists and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all night affair sees 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested). One of several significant events on 9 November in German history.source
• 1939March 1 – An Imperial Japanese Army ammunition dump explosion on the outskirts of Osaka kills 94.source
• 1939June 4 – The St. Louis, a ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida; only a few passengers have been allowed to enter Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later die in Nazi death camps during The Holocaust.source
• 1939July 6 – The last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed by the Nazis.source
• 1939Ocean liner becomes the first British civilian casualty of the war, when she is torpedoed and sunk by in the eastern Atlantic. Of the 1,418 aboard, 98 passengers and 19 crew are killed.source
• 1939October 14 – sinks the British battleship at anchor in Scapa Flow (Scotland), with the loss of 833 crew.source
• 1939December 12 – WWII: sinks after a collision with off the coast of Scotland, with the loss of 124 men.source
• 1939December 26 – Miners strike in Borinage, Belgium.source
• 1940January 29 – Three gasoline-powered trains carrying factory workers crash and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station, Yumesaki Line (Nishinari Line), Osaka, Japan, killing at least 181 people and injuring at least 92.source
• 1940April 4 – Neville Chamberlain, UK Prime Minister, in what proves to be a tragic misjudgment, declares in a major public speech that Hitler has "missed the bus".source
• 1940April 13 – WWII: Second naval Battle of Narvik – The British Royal Navy sinks all 8 defending German destroyers in the Ofotfjord.source
• 1940April 23 – The Rhythm Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, United States, kills 198 people.source
• 1940May 13–14 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government are evacuated to London, using the British destroyer .source
• 1940June 1 – WWII: Rear Admiral Sir W. Frederic Wake-Walker's flagship, the destroyer Keith, is sunk by Stukas at Dunkirk.source
• 1940June 7 – King Haakon VII of Norway and his government are evacuated from Tromsø to London, on HMS Devonshire.source
• 1940July 2 – WWII: British-owned , carrying civilian internees and POWs of Italian and German origin from Liverpool to Canada, is torpedoed and sunk by off northwest Ireland, with the loss of around 865 lives.source
• 1940July 6 – WWII: British submarine is sunk.source
• 1940Battle of Cape Spada: and five destroyers sink the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni.2source
• 1940British destroyer is torpedoed and sunk by an Italian submarine.source
• 1940August 15 – Italy, without having declared war on Greece, sinks the Greek boat Elli (Έλλη).source
• 1940August 31 – WWII: Texel Disaster: Two British Royal Navy destroyers are sunk by running into a minefield off the coast of the occupied Netherlands with the loss of around 400 men, 300 of them dead.source
• 1940September 12 – The Hercules Munitions Plant in Succasunna-Kenvil, New Jersey explodes, killing 55 people.source
• 1940September 20–22 – WWII: Convoy HX 72, a North Atlantic convoy of 43 ships, is attacked by a German U-boat group (wolfpack), eleven ships of 73 tons are sunk, seven during the second night of the attack by the U-100 under the command of Joachim Schepke.source
• 1940September 30 (night to October 1) – Arsonists from the Hitler Youth destroy the Great Synagogue of Strasbourg.source
• 1940October 14 – WWII: At least 66 people are killed when a Luftwaffe bomb penetrates Balham station on the London Underground which is in use as an air-raid shelter during The Blitz on England.source
• 1940October 18–19 – WWII: Thirty-two ships are sunk from Convoy SC 7 and Convoy HX 79 by the most effective "wolfpack" of the war, including Otto Kretschmer, Günther Prien and Joachim Schepke.source
• 1940November 25 – Patria disaster: As British authorities attempt to deport Jewish refugees (originating from German-occupied Europe) from Mandatory Palestine to Mauritius, aboard the requisitioned emigrant liner at Haifa, the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah sinks the ship with a bomb, killing around 250 refugees and crew.source
• 1940December 6 – British submarine is sunk near Taranto.source
• 1940December 25 – The German cruiser Admiral Hipper attacks a British shipping convoy (WS 5A) en route to Sierra Leone 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Cape Finisterre in Spain. Admiral Hipper sinks one ship but has to withdraw with engine trouble.source
• 1940December 29 – WWII: "Second Great Fire of London" – The Luftwaffe carries out a massive incendiary bombing raid, starting 1,500 fires. Many famous buildings, including the Guildhall and Trinity House, are either damaged or destroyed.source
• 1940British destroyers and sink an Italian submarine off Bardia.source
• 1940Ansul Fire School is founded in Marinette, Wisconsin.source
• 1941January 11 – WWII: The British Royal Navy light cruiser is bombed, catches fire and has to be sunk off Malta, with the loss of 81 crew.source
• 1941February 27 – WWII: The New Zealand Division cruiser HMS Leander (1931) sinks Italian armed merchant raider Ramb I off the Maldives.source
• 1941British submarine attacks an Italian convoy, sinking the cruiser Armando Diaz off Tunisia.source
• 1941May 8 – WWII: The German auxiliary cruiser Pinguin is sunk by British cruiser in the Indian Ocean; 555 are killed.source
• 1941May 21 – sinks the U.S.-flagged off the west African coast, having allowed the passengers and crew to disembark.source
• 1941May 27 – WWII: German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing 2,300. It is eventually found in 1989.source
• 1941In the Mediterranean, British submarine torpedoes and sinks Italian ocean liner , in use as a troopship.source
• 1941In the North Atlantic, sinks British battlecruiser , killing all but 3 crewmen, from a total of 1,418 aboard the pride of the Royal Navy.source
• 1941June 5 – Smederevo Fortress explosion: A Serbian ammunition depot explodes at Smederevo on the outskirts of Belgrade, Serbia, killing 2,500 and injuring over 4,500.source
• 1941June 14 – June deportation: Soviet officials deport about 65,000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Siberia.source
• 1941June 16 – WWII: British Fleet Air Arm aircraft sink the Vichy French destroyer Chevalier Paul off Syria.source
• 1941June 16 – All German and Italian consulates in the United States are ordered closed, and their staffs to leave the country by July 10.source
• 1941July 23 – WWII: Italian aircraft damage the British destroyer which has to be sunk in the Mediterranean.source
• 1941August 7 – WWII: British submarine sinks an Italian Marconi-class submarine.source
• 1941August 30 – German troopship Bahia Laura is sunk by British submarine in the North Sea; 450 are killed.source
• 1941October 11–12 – Fire destroys a Firestone Tire and Rubber Company plant in Fall River, Massachusetts, consuming 15,850 tons of rubber, and causing a setback to the United States military effort.source
• 1941October 31 – WWII: Destroyer , on convoy escort, is accidentally torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors.source
• 1941November 14 – WWII: British aircraft carrier sinks under tow off Gibraltar, after being torpedoed the previous day by .source
• 1941November 19 – WWII: Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran – Both commerce raiding German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran and Australian cruiser sink following a battle off the coast of Western Australia. There are no survivors from the 645 Australian sailors aboard Sydney.source
• 1941Dutch submarine HNLMS K XVI is the first Allied ship to sink a Japanese warship, sinking the destroyer Sagiri near Sarawak; K XVI is herself torpedoed the following day by Japanese submarine I-66.source
• 1942January 13 – Heinkel test pilot Helmut Schenk becomes the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat.source
• 1942January 16 – American film actress Carole Lombard and her mother are among all 22 killed aboard TWA Flight 3 when the Douglas DC-3 plane crashes into Potosi Mountain near Las Vegas while she is returning from a tour to promote the sale of war bonds.source
• 1942February 11–13 – WWII: Operation Cerberus: A Kriegsmarine (German navy) squadron comprising the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escort, dash from Brest through the English Channel to German ports; the British fail to sink any of them.source
• 1942February 24 – Struma disaster: , carrying Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-administered Palestine, is torpedoed and sunk by Soviet submarine Shch-213 in the Black Sea, killing about 791 men, women and children, with only 1 survivor.source
• 1942More than 200 American sailors die in Newfoundland when runs aground near Chambers Cove and runs aground at Lawn Point.source
• 1942Bombing of Darwin: The Japanese 1st Air Fleet under Admiral Chūichi Nagumo bombs Darwin, Australia. This force comprises the aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū and Sōryū and a powerful force of escorting surface ships. During the attack, 188 planes led by Mitsuo Fuchida destroy 11 vessels and wreck a lot of the harbor infrastructure, killing some 240 people.source
• 1942April 26 – A gas and coal dust explosion at Benxihu Colliery in Manchukuo kills as many as 1,549 workers, the world's all-time worst mining disaster.source
• 1942The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); the Royal Navy aircraft carrier and Royal Australian Navy destroyer are sunk off the country's east coast.source
• 1942May 21 – WWII: Sinking of the Mexican tanker Faja de Oro by off Key West.source
• 1942May 30–31 – WWII: Bombing of Cologne – British RAF Bomber Command's "Operation Millennium", its first "1,000 bomber raid", with associated fires make 13,000 families homeless and kills around 475 people, mostly civilians; 3,330 non-residential buildings are destroyed.source
• 1942July 13 – WWII: U-boats sink three merchant ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.source
• 1942Twenty-four ships are sunk by German bombers and submarines after Convoy PQ 17 to the Soviet Union is scattered in the Arctic Ocean to evade the German battleship Tirpitz.source
• 1942August 16 – U.S. Navy blimp L-8 (Flight 101) comes ashore near San Francisco, eventually coming down in Daly City (the crew is missing).source
• 1942September 27 – WWII: Both the commerce raiding German auxiliary cruiser Stier and American Liberty ship sink, following a gun battle in the South Atlantic. Hilfskreuzer Stier is the only commerce raider to be sunk by a defensively equipped merchant ship.source
• 1942October 2 – British cruiser collides with liner (carrying troops from the United States) off the coast of Donegal and sinks; 338 drown.source
• 1942October 13 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 104 is attacked by U-boats, sinking seven ships.source
• 1942October 21 – A Royal New Zealand Air Force torpedo bomber sinks the German MS Palatia, with a loss of 946 lives.source
• 1942October 23 – Award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger ("Thanks for the Memory") is among 12 people killed in a mid-air collision between an American Airlines DC-3 and a U.S. Army bomber near Palm Springs, California.source
• 1942British sailors board as it sinks in the Mediterranean and retrieve its Enigma machine and codebooks.source
• 1942November 1 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 107 is heavily attacked by U-boats, sinking 15 ships.source
• 1942November 28 – Cocoanut Grove fire: A fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts, kills 491.source
• 1942A U-boat sinks the off the coast of Brazil. One crewman, Chinese second steward Poon Lim, is separated from the others and spends 130 days adrift, until he is rescued on April 3, 1943.source
• 1942Guadalcanal campaign: Aviators from the sink the Japanese battleship Hiei.source
• 1942December 28 – North Atlantic Convoy ON 154 is heavily attacked by U-boats, sinking 13 ships.source
• 1943January 21 – WWII: Pan Am Flight 1104 – Pan American Airways Martin M-130 flying boat crashes about 7 smi km southwest of Ukiah, California. All 10 passengers and 9 crew aboard are killed, including Admiral Robert H. English (at this time COMSUBPAC ).source
• 1943February 6 – WWII: Royal Canadian Navy corvette HMCS Louisburg is bombed and sunk off Oran, Algeria by Italian aircraft.source
• 1943February 7 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 118 is attacked by U-boats, who sink 8 ships.source
• 1943February 21 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy ON 166 is attacked by U-boats, which sink eleven ships.source
• 1943February 22 – WWII: Royal Canadian Navy corvette HMCS Weyburn sinks east of Gibraltar, after being mined.source
• 1943February 23–24 – Cavan Orphanage Fire: 35 girls and a cook from St Joseph's Orphanage, an industrial school at Cavan, Ireland, are killed in a fire in their dormitories. A subsequent inquiry absolves the Poor Clares of blame.source
• 1943March 2 – WWII: Battle of the Bismarck Sea – United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships, then strafe survivors in the water.source
• 1943March 9–10 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 121 is attacked by U-boats sinking seven ships.source
• 1943March 14 – WWII: British submarine HMS Thunderbolt is sunk off Sicily by an Italian corvette, the second time this vessel has been lost with all hands.source
• 1943March 27 – WWII: British Royal Navy escort carrier is destroyed by an accidental explosion in the Firth of Clyde, killing 379 of the crew of 528.source
• 1943Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci sinks Canadian Pacific liner RMS Empress of Canada off Sierra Leone. Nearly half of the 392 fatalities are Italian prisoners of war.source
• 1943April 3 – Shipwrecked steward Poon Lim, BEM, is rescued by Brazilian fishermen after being adrift for 133 days.source
• 1943May 6 – WWII: Six U-boats are sunk, after sinking 12 ships from Convoy ONS 5, in the last major North Atlantic U-boat "wolfpack" attack of the war.source
• 1943June 1 – BOAC Flight 777, a scheduled passenger flight, is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s; all 17 persons aboard perish, including actor Leslie Howard.source
• 1943July 4 – 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash: The aircraft carrying General Władysław Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile, crashes, killing him and 15 others, leading to a lasting controversy over the circumstances.source
• 1943August 2 – WWII: John F. Kennedy's PT boat PT-109 is run down by Japanese destroyer Amagiri.source
• 1943September 7 – Gulf Hotel fire: A fire at the Gulf Hotel in Houston, Texas kills 55.source
• 1943October 19 – WWII: Allied aircraft sink the German-controlled cargo ship in the Mediterranean, killing over 2,000 people, mostly Italian military internees.source
• 1943October 24 – WWII: British Royal Navy destroyer is sunk by a mine in the Aegean Sea, with the loss of 119 of the ship's company and 134 troops.source
• 1943The last commerce raider, German auxiliary cruiser Michel, is sunk off Japan by United States submarine Tarpon.source
• 1943November 23 – The Deutsches Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg, is destroyed in an air raid (it is reopened in 1961, as the Deutsche Oper Berlin).source
• 1943November 26 – WWII: British troopship HMT Rohna is sunk off the north African coast by a Luftwaffe Henschel Hs 293 radio controlled glide bomb, killing 1,015.source
• 1943A Japanese submarine sinks the surfaced U.S. submarine , near Chuuk Lagoon (Truk).source
• 1943December 2 – WWII: Bari chemical warfare disaster: A surprise Luftwaffe air raid on Bari, Italy sinks 28 Allied ships in the harbor, including the American Liberty ship , releasing its secret cargo of mustard gas bombs, inflating the number of casualties.source
• 1944January 15 – The Soviet Union ceases production of the Mosin–Nagant 1891/30 sniper rifle.source
• 1944Light cruiser is sunk by a Henschel Hs 293 guided missile from a German aircraft off Anzio, western Italy, with the loss of 46 men.source
• 1944February 18 – WWII: British light cruiser is torpedoed and sunk by U-410 in the Mediterranean; 418 of her crew, including the captain, go down with the ship.source
• 19442,765 drown when American submarine torpedoes Japanese troop transport Lima Maru.source
• 19442,670 drown when British submarine torpedoes German-captured carrying Italian prisoners of war.source
• 1944Norwegian heavy water sabotage: The Norwegian resistance sinks train ferry SF Hydro which is carrying a shipment of heavy water from the Vemork plant to Germany along Tinnsjå in Telemark.source
• 1944March 9 – WWII: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia, killing 757 and leaving 25,000 homeless.source
• 1944April 14 – Bombay Explosion: Freighter SS Fort Stikine, carrying a mixed cargo of ammunition, cotton bales and gold, explodes in harbour at Bombay (India), sinking surrounding ships and killing around 1,300 people.source
• 1944May 31 – WWII: American destroyer escort sinks the sixth Japanese submarine in two weeks. This anti-submarine warfare performance remains unmatched through the 20th century.source
• 1944July 31 – WWII: American submarine torpedoes Japanese troop transport Yoshino Maru; 2,495 drown.source
• 1944Port Chicago disaster: The SS E. A. Bryan, loaded with ammunition, explodes at the Port Chicago, California, Naval Magazine, killing 320 sailors and civilian personnel.source
• 1944In the Kara Sea, German submarine U-365 torpedoes the passenger-cargo ship Marina Raskova; 618 people die.source
• 1944Japanese vessels attack and sink the submarine off Luzon.source
• 1944September 22 – WWII: The Red Army captures Tallinn, Estonia. Prime Minister in Duties of the President of Estonia Jüri Uluots and 80,000 Estonian civilians manage to escape to Sweden and Germany. The evacuees include almost the entire population of Estonian Swedes. Soviet bombing raids on the evacuating ships sink several, with thousands on board.source
• 1944British submarine torpedoes Japanese "hell ship" ; 5,620 drown.source
• 1944The Laksevåg floating dry dock at Bergen (Norway) is sunk by British X-class submarine X-24.source
• 1944Shin'yō Maru incident: Japanese cargo ship is torpedoed and sunk in the Sulu Sea by American submarine USS Paddle while carrying 750 American prisoners of war; 688 perish.source
• 1944October 10 – WWII: 10/10 Air Raid: Allied forces inflict significant losses upon Imperial Japanese Navy ships moored in Naha Harbor, destroying much of the city of Naha, Okinawa as well.source
• 1944October 25 – WWII: is sunk in the Formosa Strait by one of her own torpedoes. Medal of Honor-winning submarine ace Richard O'Kane becomes a prisoner of war.source
• 1944November 7 – Election day rail accident in Puerto Rico: A passenger train derails at Aguadilla due to excessive speed on a downgrade; 16 are killed, 50 injured.source
• 1944November 14 – WWII: American submarine torpedoes Japanese aircraft carrier Akitsu Maru in the East China Sea; 2,246 drown.source
• 1944November 29 – WWII: American submarine sinks Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano, the largest carrier built to this date, and will remain through the twentieth century the largest ship sunk by a submarine.source
• 1944December 15 – A USAAF utility aircraft carrying bandleader Major Glenn Miller disappears in heavy fog over the English Channel, while flying to Paris.source
• 1944December 24 – WWII: Fifty German V-1 flying bombs, air-launched from Heinkel He 111 bombers flying over the North Sea, target Manchester in England, killing 42 and injuring more than 100 in the Oldham area.source
• 1945January 21–22 (night) – At the Grünhagen railroad station, located in East Prussia at this date, two trains, heading for Elbing, collide. At dawn the station is reached by Soviet Army infantry and tanks which destroy the station, killing between 140 and 150 people.source
• 1945The Bombing of Wesel begins, destroying 97% of the town over three days.source
• 1945March 9–10 – WWII: Bombing of Tokyo: USAAF B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, Japan with incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 citizens in the firebombing. It is the single most destructive conventional air attack of the war.source
• 1945Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing about 800 of her crewmen and crippling the ship.source
• 1945The Bombing of Würzburg, as part of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany, destroys 89% of the city and causes 4,000 deaths.source
• 1945is sunk by Soviet submarine L-3 in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German troops and civilians as part of Operation Hannibal; 7,000–8,000 drown.source
• 1945Mass suicide in Demmin: An estimated 700–2,500 suicides take place, after 80% of the town has been destroyed by the Soviets during the past three days.source
• 1945German auxiliary cruiser Orion is sunk on her way to Copenhagen carrying refugees, with a loss of over 3,800 lives.source
• 1945The prison ships Cap Arcona (5,000 dead), Thielbek (2,750 dead) and Deutschland (all survive) are sunk by the British Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.source
• 1945July 4 – Brazilian cruiser Bahia is sunk by an accidentally induced explosion, killing more than 300 and stranding the survivors in shark-infested waters.source
• 1945July 16 – A train collision near Munich, Germany kills 102 war prisoners.source
• 1945July 27 – WWII: Bombing of Aomori – Two USAAF B-29s drop a total of 60,000 leaflets on the Japanese city of Aomori, warning civilians of an air raid and urging them to leave immediately.source
• 1945July 28 – Bombing of Aomori – The Japanese city of Aomori is firebombed by 63 USAAF B-29 heavy bombers, killing 1,767 civilians and destroying 18,045 homes.source
• 1945July 28 – 1945 Empire State Building B-25 crash: A North American B-25 Mitchell crashes into the Empire State Building in New York City, killing 14 people.source
• 1945August 6 – WWII: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima – United States Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay drops a uranium-235 atomic bomb, codenamed "Little Boy", on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. local time, resulting in between 90,000 and 146,000 deaths.source
• 1945Atomic bombing of Nagasaki: United States B-29 Bockscar drops a plutonium-239 atomic bomb, codenamed "Fat Man", on the Japanese city of Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m. local time, resulting in between 39,000 and 80,000 deaths.source
• 1945December 5 – Flight 19 of United States Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers disappears on a training exercise from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale.source
• 1946February 20 – An explosion kills more than 400 coal miners in Bergkamen, West Germany.source
• 1946April 5 – A British Fleet Air Arm Vickers Wellington crashes into a residential area in Rabat, Malta during a training exercise, killing all 4 crew members and 16 civilians on the ground.source
• 1946April 25 – Naperville train disaster: The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy's Exposition Flyer crashes at speed into the rear of the Advance Flyer at Loomis Street in Naperville, Illinois; 45 are killed.source
• 1946May 21 – Manhattan Project physicist Louis Slotin accidentally triggers a fission reaction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States and, although saving his coworkers, gives himself a lethal dose of ionizing radiation, making him the second victim of a criticality accident in history (the incident is initially treated as classified information).source
• 1946December 7 – The Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta, United States, kills 119.source
• 1947January 19 – Ferry sinks in the South Euboean Gulf of Greece killing 392.source
• 1947January 26 – A KLM Douglas DC-3 aircraft crashes soon after taking off from Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen, killing all 22 people on board, including Prince Gustaf Adolf, second in line to the Swedish throne, and American opera singer Grace Moore.source
• 1947February 8 – The Karlslust dance hall fire in Berlin, Germany, kills over 80 people.source
• 1947February 20 – An explosion at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Company in Los Angeles leaves 17 dead, 100 buildings damaged, and a 22 ft m crater in the ground.source
• 1947February 25 – Hachikō Line derailment: The worst-ever train accident in Japan kills 184 people.source
• 1947March 25 – A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, United States; 111 miners are killed.source
• 1947March 28 – A World War II Japanese booby trap explodes on Corregidor Island, killing 28 people.source
• 1947April 16 – Texas City disaster: The ammonium nitrate cargo of French-registered Liberty ship explodes in Texas City, Texas in one of the largest man-made non-nuclear explosions in history, killing at least 581, including all but one member of the city fire department, injuring at least 5,000 and destroying 20 city blocks. Of the dead, remains of 113 are never found, and 62 are unidentifiable.source
• 1947May 29 – A United States Army Air Forces Douglas C-54 Skymaster crashes on approach to Naval Air Station Atsugi, Japan, killing all 41 on board in the worst aviation accident in Japanese history up to this time.source
• 1947May 29 – An Air Iceland Douglas C-47 on a domestic flight in Iceland crashes into a mountainside killing all 25 people on board.source
• 1947May 30 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 605: A Douglas C-54 Skymaster crashes near Bainbridge, Maryland, killing all 53 aboard (49 passengers, 4 crew), in America's worst commercial aviation disaster to this date.source
• 1947July 17 – Indian passenger ship is capsized by a cyclone at Mumbai, India, with 625 people killed.source
• 1947August 2 – 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident: A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile (the wreckage will not be found until 1998).source
• 1947August 30 – A fire at a movie theater in Rueil, a suburb of Paris, France, kills 83 people.source
• 1947November 18 – Ballantyne's fire: A fire in Ballantynes department store in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41 people.source
• 1947December 3 – 16 are killed and about 30 injured in a train derailment in Arras, France. Authorities report that the disaster is an act of sabotage and accuse communists of being responsible in the midst of the country's ongoing labor strife.source
• 1948January 7 – Mantell UFO incident: Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object.source
• 1948January 29 – A DC-3 aircraft crash at Los Gatos Creek, near Coalinga, California, kills 4 US citizens and 28 deportees, commemorated in a protest song ("Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)") by Woody Guthrie.source
• 1948April 15 – Pan American World Airways flight 1-10 crashes on approach to Shannon Airport in Ireland, killing all but one of the thirty-one passengers and crew.source
• 1948May 16 – New York City Fire Department Rescue 5 is founded for Staten Island.source
• 1948May 30 – A dike along the Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon, within minutes; 15 people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.source
• 1948June 17 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing 43 and injuring 84 people on board.source
• 1948July 16 – Three armed men hijack the Cathay Pacific passenger plane Miss Macao and shoot the pilot; the plane crashes, killing 26 of 27 people on board.source
• 1948July 28 – Around 200 die in an explosion at a chemical plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany.source
• 1948October 30 – Gozo luzzu disaster: A luzzu fishing boat overloaded with passengers capsizes and sinks in the Gozo Channel off Qala, Gozo, Malta, killing 23 of the 27 people on board.source
• 1948December 4 – Chinese liner sinks after an explosion occurs at the stern, which is thought to have been caused by a Japanese mine from World War 2, killing up to 3920 people.source
• 1949March 2 – The B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II (under Captain James Gallagher) lands in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight (it was refueled in flight 4 times).source
• 1949May 4 – Superga air disaster: A Fiat G.212 airliner of Avio Linee Italiane, carrying the entire Torino F.C. football team, crashes into the back wall of the Basilica of Superga, killing all 31 on board.source
• 1949July 12 – 1949 Bombay KLM Constellation crashsource
• 1949July 15 – In an explosion at Prüm in Germany, the town is badly damaged and 12 people die. The explosion crater is one of the largest ever recorded.source
• 1949August 14 – The Salvatore Giuliano Gang explodes mines under a police barracks, outside Palermo, Sicily.source
• 1949September 17 – Canadian steamship burns in Toronto Harbour, with the loss of over 118 lives.source
• 1949October 27 – 1949 Air France Lockheed Constellation crash: An Air France flight from Paris to New York crashes in the Azores on São Miguel Island, killing all aboard. Among the victims are violinist Ginette Neveu, and French boxer Marcel Cerdan.source
• 1950January 5 – Sverdlovsk plane crash: Aeroflot Lisunov Li-2 crashes in a snowstorm. All 19 aboard are killed, including almost the entire national ice hockey team (VVS Moscow) of the Soviet Air Force – 11 players, as well as a team doctor and a masseur.source
• 1950January 12 – British submarine collides with Swedish oil tanker Divina in the Thames Estuary and sinks; 64 die.source
• 1950February 6 – In West Virginia, 372,000 coal miners strike (they remain out until March 3).source
• 1950March 12 – A plane carrying returning rugby fans from Ireland to Wales crashes near Llandow, with the loss of 80 lives.source
• 1950August 5 – 1950 Fairfield-Suisun Boeing B-29 crash: A bomb-laden Boeing B-29 Superfortress crashes into a residential area in California, United States, killing 17 people and injuring 68.source
• 1950September 7 – The Knockshinnoch Disaster in Scotland kills 13 coal miners; 116 are rescued.source
• 1950November 13 – A Curtiss Reid Flying Services plane crashes while en route to Paris from Rome, killing all 52 on board.source
• 1950November 24 – A phenomenal winter storm ravages the northeastern United States, brings 30–50 inches of snow and temperatures below zero, and kills 323 people.source
• 1951February 6 – Woodbridge train wreck: A Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train derails near Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, killing 85 people and injuring over 500, in one of the worst rail disasters in American history.source
• 1951April 24 – Sakuragichō train fire: in Yokohama, Japan, a fire on a train kills more than 100.source
• 1951June 15–July 1 – In New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, thousands of acres of forests are destroyed in fires.source
• 1951December 13 – A water storage tank collapses in Tucumcari, New Mexico, United States, resulting in 4 deaths and 200 buildings destroyed.source
• 1951December 20 – A chartered Curtiss C-46 Commando crash-lands in Cobourg, Ontario Canada; all on board survive.source
• 1952January 10 - A Douglas C-47 Dakota operated by Aer Lingus crashes in Wales while flying from Northolt Royal Air Force Station to Dublin. All twenty-three occupants are killed.source
• 1952January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses.source
• 1952April 4 – West Ice accidents: During a severe storm in the West Ice, east of Greenland, 78 seal hunters on 5 Norwegian seal hunting vessels vanish without a trace.source
• 1952April 11 – Pan Am Flight 526A, Douglas DC-4 Clipper Endeavor, suffers failure of two engines and ditches in rough seas 11.3 miles (18 km) northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico in the Atlantic Ocean, sinking in minutes; 52 of the 69 people on board die. After this accident the implementation of pre-flight safety demonstrations is recommended. The aircraft's wreckage will be discovered in 2026.source
• 1952April 26 – United States Navy aircraft carrier Wasp collides with destroyer Hobson while on exercises in the Atlantic Ocean, killing 175 men.source
• 1952June 1 – The Roman Catholic Church bans the books of André Gide.source
• 1952June 13 – "Catalina affair": Soviet MiG-15 fighter planes shoot down a Swedish military Douglas C-47 Skytrain, carrying out signals intelligence gathering operations over the Baltic Sea, killing all 8 crew; three days later they shoot down a Catalina flying boat, searching for possible survivors.source
• 1952August 31 – An accident causing 13 deaths results in closure of the Grenzlandring as an auto race circuit in Wegberg, Germany.source
• 1952October 8 – Three trains collide in the Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash near London, England, killing 112 people and injuring 340 people, making it the worst rail disaster in the UK since the 1915 Quintinshill rail disaster.source
• 1952December 20 – The crash of a United States Air Force C-124 Globemaster at Moses Lake, WA kills 86 servicemen.source
• 1953March 1 – Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke, after an all-night dinner with Soviet Union interior minister Lavrentiy Beria and future premiers Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev. The stroke paralyzes the right side of his body and renders him unconscious until his death on March 5.source
• 1953April 16 – The Habar Corporation's building in Chicago, United States, catches fire, killing 35 employees.source
• 1953June 18 – Tachikawa air disaster: A United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashes just after takeoff from Tachikawa Airfield near Tokyo, Japan, killing all 129 people on board in the worst air crash in history up to this time, and the first with a confirmed death toll exceeding 100.source
• 1953July 17 – The greatest recorded loss of United States midshipmen in a single event results from an aircraft crash near NAS Whiting Field.source
• 1953December 24 – Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge collapses at Tangiwai, New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River; 151 are killed.source
• 1954January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed.source
• 1954March 29 – A C-47 transport with French nurse Geneviève de Galard on board is wrecked on the runway at Dien Bien Phu.source
• 1954April 8 – A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collides with a Trans-Canada Air Lines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.source
• 1954May 26 – A fire on board the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Bennington, off Narragansett Bay, Massachusetts, kills 103 sailors.source
• 1954June 7 – English cryptanalyst, mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, age 41, commits suicide by cyanide poisoning.source
• 1954September 5 - KLM flight 633, a Lockheed L-1049C Super Constellation named “Triton”, attempted to ditch into the river Shannon immediately after takeoff from Shannon Airport, Ireland. 28 of the 56 passengers and crew were killedsource
• 1954September 26 – Japanese ferry Tōya Maru sinks during a typhoon in the Tsugaru Strait. More than 1,100 people are killed, 7 other ships are wrecked, and at least nine others seriously damaged.source
• 1954November 12 – The main immigration port-of-entry in New York Harbor at Ellis Island closes permanently.source
• 1954November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, a four-kilogram piece of the Hodges Meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and badly bruises a napping woman, in the first documented case of an object from outer space hitting a person.source
• 1955January 23 – The Sutton Coldfield rail crash kills 17, near Birmingham, England.source
• 1955February 16 – Nearly 100 die in a fire at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan.source
• 1955February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,077.source
• 1955May 11 – Japanese National Railways' ferry Shiun Maru sinks after a collision with sister ship Uko Maru, in thick fog off Takamatsu, Shikoku, in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan; 166 passengers (many children) and 2 crew members are killed. This event is influential in plans to construct the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (built 1986–98).source
• 1955June 11 – Le Mans disaster: Eighty-three people are killed and at least 100 are injured after two race cars collide in the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans.source
• 1955June 13 – Mir mine, the first diamond mine in the Soviet Union, is discovered.source
• 1955July 27 – El Al Flight 402 from Vienna (Austria) to Tel Aviv, via Istanbul, is shot down over Bulgaria. All 58 passengers and crewmen aboard the Lockheed Constellation are killed.source
• 1955August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.source
• 1955September 30 – Actor James Dean is killed when his automobile collides with another car at a highway junction, near Cholame, California.source
• 1955October 29 – Soviet battleship Novorossiysk explodes at moorings in Sevastopol Bay, killing 608 (the Soviet Union's worst naval disaster to date).source
• 1955November 1 – A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B, over Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and 5 crew members on board.source
• 1956June 30 – 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision: A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft, in the deadliest civil aviation disaster to date; the accident leads to sweeping changes in the regulation of cross-country flight and air traffic control over the United States.source
• 1956July 25 – The Italian ocean liner sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog 72 km mi south of Nantucket island, killing 51.source
• 1956August 7 – Seven ammunition trucks loaded with 1,053 boxes of dynamite explode in Cali, Colombia. Death estimates range from 1,300 to 10,000, in a city that at this time has 120,000 inhabitants.source
• 1956August 8 – 262 miners (chiefly Italian nationals) die in a fire at the Bois du Cazier coal mine, in Marcinelle, Belgium.source
• 1956October 15 – The British Royal Air Force retires its last Avro Lancaster bomber.source
• 1956December 9 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes into Slesse Mountain near Chilliwack, British Columbia. All 62 people aboard, including five Canadian Football League players, are killed.source
• 1957February 17 – A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri, United States, kills 72 people.source
• 1957March 17 – 1957 Cebu Douglas C-47 crash: Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash.source
• 1957March 22 – A United States Air Force Boeing C-97 disappears somewhere over the Pacific Ocean near the coast of Japan. All 67 people and the aircraft remain missing to this day.source
• 1957July 28 – Heavy rains and mudslides at Isahaya, western Kyūshū, Japan, kill 992.source
• 1957September 21 – The sailing ship Pamir sinks off the Azores in a hurricane.source
• 1957September 29 – The Kyshtym disaster occurs at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant in Russia.source
• 1957October 20 – Two trains collide at Yarımburgaz in Turkey; 95 die.source
• 1957November 15 – 1957 Aquila Airways Solent crash: A flying boat crash on the Isle of Wight leaves 45 dead.source
• 1957December 4 – The Lewisham rail crash in London, UK, leaves 92 people dead.source
• 1957December 5 – All 326,000 Dutch nationals are expelled from Indonesia.source
• 1958February 5 – 1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision: A U.S. B-47 bomber jettisons a hydrogen bomb into Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island, Georgia; it is never recovered.source
• 1958February 28 – Prestonsburg bus disaster: One of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history occurs in Kentucky when a school bus hits a truck and falls into a river, resulting in 27 deaths, 26 of them schoolchildren. Twenty-two others are rescued.source
• 1958March 1 – Turkish passenger ship capsizes and sinks in a sudden gale while crossing the Gulf of İzmit, Turkey; many of the 272 who die are teenage students.source
• 1958March 11 – 1958 Mars Bluff B-47 nuclear weapon loss incident: A U.S. B-47 bomber accidentally drops an atom bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Without a fissile warhead, its conventional explosives destroy a house and injure six people.source
• 1958March 19 – The Monarch Underwear Company fire occurs in New York, United States, killing 24 people.source
• 1958April 21 – United Airlines Flight 736 is involved in a mid-air collision with a U.S. Air Force F-100F jet fighter over what becomes Enterprise, Nevada; all 49 persons in both aircraft are killed.source
• 1958June 20 – The iron barque Omega of Callao, Peru (built in Liverpool, 1887), the world's last full-rigged ship trading under sail alone, sinks on passage carrying guano from the Pachacamac Islands for Huacho.source
• 1958August 14 – KLM Flight 607-E, a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation, crashes into the Atlantic with 99 people aboard, all of whom are killed.source
• 1958December 1 – Our Lady of the Angels School fire: 90 students and 3 nuns are killed in a fire in Chicago.source
• 1958December 16 – A fire breaks out in the Vida Department Store in Bogotá, Colombia and kills 84 persons.source
• 1958December 24 – 1958 BOAC Bristol Britannia crash: A BOAC Bristol Britannia (312 G-AOVD) crashes near Winkton, England, during a test flight, killing nine people. Three crew members survive.source
• 1959January 9 – The Vega de Tera disaster in Spain, a flood caused by a dam collapse, nearly destroys the town of Ribadelago and kills 144 residents.source
• 1959January 22 – Knox Mine disaster: Water breaches the River Slope Mine in Port Griffith, near Pittston, Pennsylvania, United States; 12 miners are killed.source
• 1959January 30 – Danish passenger/cargo ship , returning to Copenhagen after its maiden voyage to Greenland, strikes an iceberg and sinks off the Greenland coast with the loss of all 95 on board.source
• 1959February 2 – Nine ski hikers mysteriously perish in the northern Ural Mountains in the Dyatlov Pass incident and are all found dead a few weeks later.source
• 1959February 3 – American Airlines Flight 320, a Lockheed L-188 Electra from Chicago crashes into the East River on approach to New York City's LaGuardia Airport, killing 65 of the 73 people on board.source
• 1959February 20 – The Canadian Government cancels the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft project.source
• 1959June 30 – 1959 Okinawa F-100 crash: Twenty-one students are killed and more than a hundred injured when a U.S. Air Force North American F-100 Super Sabre jet crashes into Miamori Elementary School on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The pilot ejected before the plane struck the school.source
• 1959August 7 – The Roseburg Blast in Oregon, caused when a truck carrying explosives catches fire, kills 14 and causes $12 million worth of damage.source
• 1959December 8 – The life-boat Mona, based at Broughty Ferry in Scotland, capsizes during a rescue attempt with the loss of 8 lives.source
• 1960January 21 – Avianca Flight 671 crashes and burns upon landing at Montego Bay, Jamaica killing 37, the worst air disaster in Jamaica's history and the first for Avianca.source
• 1960January 21 – Coalbrook mining disaster: A coal mine collapses at Holly Country, South Africa, killing 435 miners.source
• 1960February 26 – Alitalia Flight 618: A Douglas DC 7 en route to New York crashes into a cemetery at Shannon, Ireland, shortly after takeoff, killing 34 of the 52 persons on board.source
• 1960March 17 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 crashes near Tell City, Indiana, killing all 63 on board.source
• 1960July 1 – Cold War: A Soviet Air Force MiG-19 fighter plane flying north of Murmansk, Russia, over the Barents Sea, shoots down a six-man RB-47 Stratojet reconnaissance plane of the U.S. Air Force. Four of the U.S. Air Force officers are killed, and the two survivors are held prisoner in the Soviet Union.source
• 1960October 24 – Nedelin catastrophe: A large rocket explodes on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, killing at least 92 people of the Soviet space program.source
• 1960November 14 – Stéblová train disaster: A head-on collision between two trains in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia, kills 118 people.source
• 1960December 1 – Striking coal miners at the Miike Coal Mine in Japan return to work, ending the unprecedented 312-day-long Miike Struggle.source
• 1960December 16 – New York mid-air collision: A United Air Lines DC-8 collides in mid-air with a TWA Lockheed Constellation over Staten Island in New York City. All 128 passengers and crewmembers on the two airliners, and six people on the ground, are killed.source
• 1960December 19 – Fire sweeps through the USS Constellation, to become the U.S. Navy's largest aircraft carrier, while she is under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; killing 50 workers and injuring 150.source
• 1961January 3 – Aero Flight 311 (Koivulahti air disaster): Douglas DC-3C OH-LCC of Finnish airline Aero crashes near Kvevlax (Koivulahti), on approach to Vaasa Airport in Finland, killing all 25 on board, due to pilot error: an investigation finds that the captain and first officer were both exhausted for lack of sleep, and had consumed excessive amounts of alcohol at the time of the crash.source
• 1961January 24 – 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A B-52 Stratofortress, carrying two nuclear bombs, crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina.source
• 1961January 27 – Soviet submarine S-80 sinks in the Barents Sea, killing all 68 crew.source
• 1961February 15 – Sabena Flight 548 crashes near Brussels, Belgium, killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team and several coaches.source
• 1961March 13 – A second B-52 crashes near Yuba City, California, after cabin pressure is lost and the fuel runs out. Two nuclear weapons are found unexploded.source
• 1961April 8 – British India Steam Navigation Company passenger ship ' blows up and sinks off Dubai; 238 passengers and crew are killed.source
• 1961April 24 – Swedish warship Vasa, sunk on her maiden voyage in 1628, is recovered from Stockholm Harbor.source
• 1961May 1 – National Airlines Flight 337, internal to Florida, is forced by an armed hijacker to fly to Cuba, the first of a spate of such aircraft hijackings.source
• 1961June 17 – A Paris-to-Strasbourg train derails near Vitry-le-François; 24 are killed, 109 injured.source
• 1961July 7 – A coal mine in Czechoslovakia has one of its sections closed off in order to extinguish a fire and prevent an explosion, causing the suffocation of 108 miners still present.source
• 1961July 12 – A Czechoslovak Ilyushin Il-18 crashes while attempting to land at Casablanca, Morocco, killing all 72 on board.source
• 1961August 29 – A French military aircraft clips a cable of the aerial tramway connecting Pointe Helbronner and the Aiguille du Midi in the French Alps. Three cars of the tramway fall, killing five people, but the remaining 63 cable car passengers are rescued and the pilot lands his plane safely.source
• 1961September 10 – During the F1 Italian Grand Prix on the circuit of Monza, German Wolfgang von Trips, driving a Ferrari, crashes into a stand, killing 14 spectators and himself.source
• 1961September 18 – 1961 Ndola United Nations DC-6 crash: Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld is one of 16 to die in an air crash en route to Katanga, Congo.source
• 1961November 8 – Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 crashes while attempting to land at Richmond, Virginia, United States, killing 77 people on board.source
• 1961December 17 – A circus tent fire in Niterói, Brazil kills 323.source
• 1962January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the worst Dutch rail disaster.source
• 1962January 30 – Two of the high-wire "Flying Wallendas" are killed when their famous seven-person pyramid collapses during a performance in Detroit.source
• 1962February 7 – Luisenthal Mine Disaster: A coal mine explosion in Saarland, West Germany, kills 299.source
• 1962March 1 – American Airlines Flight 1 (a Boeing 707) crashes on takeoff at New York International Airport, after a rudder malfunction causes an uncontrolled roll, resulting in the loss of control of the aircraft, with the loss of all 95 on board.source
• 1962March 16 – Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, a Lockheed L-1049H Super Constellation chartered by the United States Military Air Transport Service, and carrying mainly United States Army personnel bound for South Vietnam, vanishes over the western Pacific Ocean, with the loss of all 107 on board (no wreckage or bodies are ever found).source
• 1962April 26 – The U.S. Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the far side of the Moon without returning any scientific data.source
• 1962May 3 – Mikawashima train crash: 160 die in a triple-train disaster near Tokyo.source
• 1962May 22 – Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashes near Unionville, Missouri, after the in-flight detonation of a bomb near the rear lavatory in a suicide bombing committed as insurance fraud; all 45 passengers and crew aboard are killed.source
• 1962June 3 – Air France Flight 007 (a Boeing 707) crashes on take-off at Orly Airport in Paris; 130 of 132 people on board are killed, 2 flight attendants survive. Most victims are cultural and civic leaders of Atlanta.source
• 1962June 22 – Air France Flight 117 (a Boeing 707 jet) crashes into terrain during bad weather in Guadeloupe in the West Indies, killing all 113 on board, the airline's second fatal accident in just 3 weeks, and the third fatal 707 crash of the year.source
• 1962September 23 – Flying Tiger Line Flight 923, a Lockheed L-1049H Super Constellation registered as N6923C, ditched into the Atlantic Ocean killing 28 occupants out of 76 on board. The remaining 48 were rescued six hours later.source
• 1962November 5 – A coal mining disaster in Ny-Ålesund kills 21 people; the Norwegian government is forced to resign in the aftermath of this accident, in August 1963.source
• 1962November 23 – United Air Lines Flight 297 crashes in Columbia, Maryland due to a bird strike, killing all 17 on board.source
• 1963February 12 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705 crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing all 43 aboard.source
• 1963March 5 – Country music star Patsy Cline is killed in a plane crash along with country performers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and manager Randy Hughes, during a flight from Kansas City, Missouri, back to Nashville.source
• 1963April 10 – The U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher sinks 220 smi nmi km east of Cape Cod; all 129 aboard (112 crewmen plus yard personnel) die.source
• 1963April 12 – The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish Straits. Although severely damaged, both vessels make it to port.source
• 1963May 4 – The Le Monde Theater fire in Dioirbel, Senegal, kills 64 people.source
• 1963August 14 – A huge and devastating forest fire hits the region around Paraná State, Brazil. According to government documents, two million hectares (4.94 million acres) are lost to burning and 110 persons perished.source
• 1963October 24 – Fire at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome in an R-9 Desna underground missile silo; seven people are killed.source
• 1963October 31 – 1963 Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum gas explosion: 81 die in a gas explosion during a Holiday on Ice show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis, United States.source
• 1963November 7 – 11 German miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days in what becomes known as the "Wunder von Lengede" ("miracle of Lengede").source
• 1963November 8 – Finnair aircraft OH-LCA crashes before landing at Mariehamn Airport on Åland.source
• 1963November 23 – The Golden Age Nursing Home fire kills 63 elderly people near Fitchville, Ohio, United States.source
• 1963November 29 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831, a Douglas DC-8 crashes into a wooded hillside after taking-off from Dorval International Airport near Montreal, killing all 118 on board, the worst air disaster for many years in Canada's history.source
• 1963Tsurumi rail accident: A triple train disaster in Yokohama kills 161.source
• 1963December 8 – A lightning strike causes the crash of Pan Am Flight 214 near Elkton, Maryland, United States, killing 81 people.source
• 1963December 10 – Chuck Yeager narrowly escapes death while testing an NF-104A rocket-augmented aerospace trainer when his aircraft goes out of control at 108,700 feet (nearly 21 miles up) and crashes. He parachutes to safety at 8,500 feet after vainly battling to gain control of the powerless, rapidly falling craft. In this incident he becomes the first pilot to make an emergency ejection in the full pressure suit needed for high altitude flights.source
• 1963December 22 – The cruise ship TSMS Lakonia burns 180 mi km north of Madeira, with the loss of 128 lives.source
• 1964February 10 – Melbourne–Voyager collision: 82 Australian sailors die when a Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier and a destroyer collide off New South Wales, Australia.source
• 1964May 2 – Vietnam War: Attack on USNS Card – An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos causes carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.source
• 1964May 7 – Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.source
• 1964August 2 – Vietnam War: United States destroyer Maddox is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks one gunboat, while the other two leave the battle.source
• 1965February 20 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon, after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.source
• 1965May 28 – A mining accident in Dhanbad, India, kills 268.source
• 1965June 1 – A coal mine explosion in Fukuoka, Japan, kills 237.source
• 1965June 7 – Kakanj mine disaster: A mining accident in Kakanj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, results in 128 deaths.source
• 1965June 25 – A U.S. Air Force Boeing C-135 Stratolifter bound for Okinawa crashes just after takeoff at MCAS El Toro in Orange County, California, killing all 85 on board.source
• 1965August 9 – An explosion at an Arkansas missile plant kills 53.source
• 1965August 9 – Indonesian president Sukarno collapses in public.source
• 1965October 4 – Durban rail accident: At least 150 are killed when a commuter train derails at the outskirts of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.source
• 1965November 1 – A trolleybus plunges into the Nile at Cairo, Egypt, killing 74 passengers.source
• 1965November 11 – United Airlines Flight 227 crashes short of the runway and catches fire at Salt Lake City International Airport, killing 43 out of 91 passengers and crew.source
• 1965November 13 – The burns and sinks 60 mi km off Nassau, Bahamas, with the loss of 90 lives.source
• 1966January 17 – 1966 Palomares B-52 crash: A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares, and one into the sea. Carl Brashear, the first African-American United States Navy diver, is involved in an accident during the recovery of the latter, which results in the amputation of his leg.source
• 1966January 24 – Air India Flight 101 crashes into Mont Blanc, killing all 117 people on board, including Homi J. Bhabha, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission.source
• 1966February 4 – All Nippon Airways Flight 60 plunges into Tokyo Bay; 133 people are killed.source
• 1966February 7 – The Great Fire of Iloilo, Philippines, breaks out in a lumber yard and burns for almost half a day, destroying nearly three-quarters of the City Proper area and causing 50 million pesos in total property damage.source
• 1966March 4 – Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 402 crashes during a night landing in poor visibility at Tokyo International Airport in Japan, killing 64 of 72 people on board.source
• 1966March 5 – BOAC Flight 911 crashes in severe clear-air turbulence over Mount Fuji soon after taking off from Tokyo International Airport in Japan, killing all 124 people on board.source
• 1966March 8 – Nelson's Pillar in O'Connell Street, Dublin, is clandestinely blown up by former Irish Republican Army volunteers marking this year's 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising.source
• 1966March – The DKW automobile ceases production in Germany.source
• 1966June 8 – A North American XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber prototype is destroyed in a mid-air collision with an F-104 Starfighter chase plane during a photo shoot. NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker and USAF test pilot Carl Cross are both killed.source
• 1966July 31 – Loss of MV Darlwyne: a pleasure cruiser disappears off the Cornwall coast of England with the loss of all 31 aboard.source
• 1966August 6 – Braniff International Airways Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, Nebraska, United States, killing all 42 of those on board.source
• 1966September 1 – 98 British tourists die when Britannia Airways Flight 105 crashes in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.source
• 1966October 1 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with 18 fatal injuries and no survivors 5.5 mi km south of Wemme, Oregon, the first loss of a DC-9.source
• 1966October 26 – A fire aboard the US aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin kills 44 crewmen.source
• 1966November 11 – A mine kills three Israeli paratroopers on the West Bank border.source
• 1966November 24 – TABSO Flight 101, from Sofia, Bulgaria, crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.source
• 1966December 8 – The Typaldos Line's ferry sinks in rough seas in the Aegean Sea near Crete, leaving 217 dead.source
• 1967February 7 – Serious bushfires in southern Tasmania claim 62 lives and destroy 2,642.7 square kilometres (653,025.4 acres) of land.source
• 1967March 18 – Torrey Canyon oil spill: The supertanker runs aground between Land's End and the Scilly Isles off the coast of Britain, causing the biggest oil spill in history up to that point.source
• 1967March 29 – Torrey Canyon oil spill: British Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force aircraft bomb and sink the grounded supertanker .source
• 1967April 20 – A Globe Air Bristol Britannia turboprop crashes at Nicosia, Cyprus, killing 126 people.source
• 1967April 24 – Soyuz 1: Vladimir Komarov becomes the first Soviet cosmonaut to die, when the parachute of his space capsule fails during re-entry.source
• 1967May 22 – The Innovation department store in the centre of Brussels, Belgium, burns down. It is the most devastating fire in Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured.source
• 1967May 23 – Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, blockading Israel's southern port of Eilat, and Israel's entire Red Sea coastline.source
• 1967June 4 – Stockport air disaster: British Midland flight G-ALHG crashes in Hopes Carr, Stockport, killing 72 passengers and crew.source
• 1967July 6 – Langenweddingen level crossing disaster: A level crossing collision between a train loaded with children and a tanker-truck near Magdeburg, East Germany, kills 94 people, mostly children.source
• 1967July 19 – A race riot breaks out in the North Side of Minneapolis on Plymouth Street during the Minneapolis Aquatennial Parade; businesses are vandalized and fires break out in the area, although the disturbance is quelled within hours. However, the next day a shooting sets off another incident in the same area that leads to 18 fires, 36 arrests, 3 shootings, 2 dozen people injured, and damages totaling 4.2 million. Two more such incidents occur during the following two weeks.source
• 1967July 19 – Eighty-two people are killed in a collision between Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 and a Cessna 310 near Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States.source
• 1967July 23–31 – 12th Street Riot: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city: 43 are killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.source
• 1967July 29 – An explosion and fire aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin leaves 134 dead.source
• 1967October 21 – An Egyptian surface-to-surface missile sinks the Israeli destroyer Eilat, killing 47 Israeli sailors. Israel retaliates by shelling Egyptian refineries along the Suez Canal.source
• 1967November 15 – Test pilot Michael Adams is killed when his X-15 rocket plane tumbles out of control during atmospheric re-entry and disintegrates.source
• 1967December 1 – The RMS Queen Mary is retired. Her place is taken by the Queen Elizabeth 2.source
• 1967December 31 – Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel attempts to jump 141 feet over the Caesars Palace Fountains on the Las Vegas Strip in the United States. Knievel crashes on landing and the accident is caught on film.source
• 1968January 21 – 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash: A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.source
• 1968January 25 – Israeli submarine sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 69.source
• 1968January 28 – French submarine Minerve sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 52.source
• 1968March 2 – Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in the Black Country of England.source
• 1968March 3 – Air France Flight 212, a Boeing 707, crashes in Guadeloupe while approaching an airport. As a result, 63 people die.source
• 1968March 8 – The Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sinks with all 98 crew members, about 90 nautical miles (104 miles or 167 km) southwest of Hawaii.source
• 1968March 24 – Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashes en route from Cork to London near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 passengers and crew.source
• 1968April 6 – Richmond, Indiana explosion: A double explosion in downtown Richmond caused by a methane leak kills 41 and injures 150.source
• 1968April 7 – British racing driver Jim Clark is killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.source
• 1968April 20 – South African Airways Flight 228 a Boeing 707 crashed shortly after take-off killing 123 people on board.source
• 1968May 3 – Braniff Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas, United States, killing all 85 people on board.source
• 1968May 16 – Ronan Point, a 23 floor tower block in Canning Town, east London, partially collapses after a gas explosion, killing 5.source
• 1968May 22 – The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.source
• 1968June 23 – Puerta 12 tragedy: A football stampede in Buenos Aires leaves 74 dead and 150 injured.source
• 1968August 11 – The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain. A selection of British Rail steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and return – the journey is known as the Fifteen Guinea Special.source
• 1968August 18 – Two charter buses are forced into the Hida River on National Highway Route 41 in Japan in an accident caused by heavy rain; 104 are killed.source
• 1968September 7 – The crash of Air France Flight 1611 kills 95 people, including French Army General René Cogny, as the Caravelle jetliner plunges into the Mediterranean Sea following a fire while making its approach to Nice following its departure from the island of Corsica.source
• 1968November 20 – The Farmington Mine disaster in Farmington, West Virginia, kills seventy-eight men.source
• 1968November 22 – Japan Air Lines Flight 2, flying from Tokyo to San Francisco International Airport ditches in San Francisco Bay due to pilot error; all 107 on board survive without injury.source
• 1968November 24 – 4 men hijack Pan Am Flight 281 from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba.source
• 1969January 5 – Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants.source
• 1969January 14 – An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise near Hawaii kills 28 and injures 314.source
• 1969January 28 – 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: A blowout on Union Oil's Platform A spills 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into a channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California; on February 5 the oil spill closes Santa Barbara's harbor. The incident inspires Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970.source
• 1969February 8 – The Allende meteorite explodes over Mexico.source
• 1969March 16 – Viasa Flight 742 crashes into a neighborhood in Maracaibo, Venezuela, shortly after taking off for Miami; all 84 people on board the DC-9 jet are killed along with 71 people on the ground.source
• 1969March 17 – The Longhope life-boat is lost after answering a mayday call during severe storms in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the northern tip of Scotland; the entire crew of 8 die.source
• 1969March 20 – One hundred of the 105 passengers and crew on a United Arab Airlines flight, most of them Muslim pilgrims returning to Aswan from Mecca, are killed when the Ilyushin-18 turboprop crashes during a sandstorm.source
• 1969March 31 – The Barroterán coal mine disaster kills 153 coal miners in Mexico.source
• 1969April 15 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a US reconnaissance aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.source
• 1969June 3 – While operating at sea on SEATO maneuvers, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne accidentally rams and slices into the American destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea, killing 74 American seamen.source
• 1969August 21 – Australian Denis Michael Rohan sets fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.source
• 1969September 9 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 853, a DC-9 airliner, collides in flight with a small Piper PA-28 airplane, and crashes near Fairland, Indiana, killing all 83 people in both aircraft.source
• 1969September 22–25 – An Islamic conference in Rabat, Morocco, following the al-Aqsa Mosque fire (August 21), condemns the Israeli claim of ownership of Jerusalem.source
• 1969November 14 – The SS United States, the last active United States Lines passenger ship, is withdrawn from service.source
• 1969November 15 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.source
• 1969December 3 – Air France Flight 212, a Boeing 707 registered as F-BHSZ, crashed shortly after takeoff from Venezuela killing all 62 occupants on board. The cause of the accident is not yet known since the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) did not publish an investigation report. It will not be released until 2029, sixty years after the accident.source
• 1969December 12 – The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, Italy, kills 17 people and injures 88.source
• 1970February 1 – The Benavídez rail disaster near Buenos Aires, Argentina (a rear-end collision) kills 236.source
• 1970March 4 – All 57 men aboard the French submarine Eurydice are killed when the vessel implodes while making a practice dive in the Mediterranean Sea.source
• 1970March 31 – Japan Airlines Flight 351, carrying 131 passengers and 7 crew from Tokyo to Fukuoka, is hijacked by Japanese Red Army members. All passengers and crew are eventually freed.source
• 1970April 8 – A huge gas explosion at a subway construction site in Osaka, Japan, kills 79 and injures over 400.source
• 1970July 3 – All 112 people on board Dan-Air Flight 1903 are killed when the chartered British De Havilland Comet crashes into mountains north of Barcelona through navigational error.source
• 1970July 5 – Air Canada Flight 621 crashes near Toronto International Airport, Toronto, Ontario through pilot error; all 109 passengers and crew are killed.source
• 1970October 2 – The Wichita State University football team's "Gold" plane crashes in Colorado, killing most of the players. They were on their way (along with administrators and fans) to a game with Utah State University.source
• 1970October 25 – The wreck of the Confederate submarine Hunley is found off Charleston, South Carolina, by 22-year-old pioneer underwater archaeologist, Dr. E. Lee Spence. Hunley is the first submarine in history to sink a ship in warfare.source
• 1970November 1 – The Club Cinq-Sept fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France, kills 146.source
• 1970November 14 – Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in Wayne County, West Virginia; all 75 on board, including 37 players and 5 coaches from the Marshall University football team, are killed.source
• 1970December 15 – The South Korean ferry Namyong Ho capsizes off Korea Strait; 308 people are killed.source
• 1970December 30 – Hurricane Creek mine disaster, near Hyden, Kentucky, USAsource
• 1971January 2 – 1971 Ibrox disaster: During a crush, 66 people are killed and over 200 injured in Glasgow, Scotland.source
• 1971March 8 – The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI breaks into the Media, Pennsylvania offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and removes all of its files.source
• 1971March 18 – A landslide in Chungar, Peru crashes into Yanawayin Lake, killing 200.source
• 1971May 23 – Aviogenex Flight 130 crashes at Rijeka Airport, Yugoslavia, killing 78 people, mostly British tourists.source
• 1971June 6 – A midair collision between Hughes Airwest Flight 706 Douglas DC-9 jetliner and a U.S. Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom jet fighter near Duarte, California claims 50 lives.source
• 1971June 10 – Amtrak had its first fatal accident when 11 people were killed and 163 injured in the derailment of the City of New Orleans train near Tonti, Illinois.source
• 1971June 27 – Concert promoter Bill Graham closes the legendary Fillmore East, which first opened on 2nd Avenue in New York City on March 8, 1968.source
• 1971July 30 – In Japan, an All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 collides with a Japanese fighter jet; 162 people are killed.source
• 1971September 4 – A Boeing 727 (Alaska Airlines Flight 1866) crashes into the side of a mountain near Juneau, Alaska, killing all 111 people on board.source
• 1971September 19 – Trams in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) cease to run.source
• 1971October 21 – The Clarkston explosion in Scotland, caused by a gas leak, kills 22 people.source
• 1971November 9 – A Royal Air Force C-130 crashes into the Ligurian Sea near Leghorn, Italy, killing all 51 people on board.source
• 1971November 22 – In Britain's worst mountaineering tragedy, the Cairngorm Plateau disaster, five children and one of their leaders are found dead from exposure in the Scottish mountains.source
• 1971December 3–4 – The Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi (former ) sinks mysteriously near the Indian coast while laying mines.source
• 1971December 24 – Juliane Koepcke survives a fall of 10,000 feet following disintegration of LANSA Flight 508.source
• 1971December 25 – Daeyeonggak Hotel fire: A fire at a 22-story hotel in Seoul, South Korea, kills 158 people.source
• 1971Crude oil production peaks in the continental United States at approximately 4.5 Moilbbl/d m3/d.source
• 1972January 7 – Iberia Airlines Flight 602 crashes into a 462-meter peak on the island of Ibiza; 104 are killed.source
• 1972January 9 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth catches fire and sinks in Hong Kong's Victoria harbor while undergoing conversion to a floating university.source
• 1972January 26 – Yugoslavian air stewardess Vesna Vulović is the only survivor when her plane crashes in Czechoslovakia. She survives after falling 10160 m ft in the tail section of the aircraft.source
• 1972February 22 – Lufthansa Flight 649 is hijacked and taken to Aden. Passengers are released the following day after a ransom of 5 million US dollars is agreed.source
• 1972May 2 – Fire at the Sunshine Mine, a silver mine in Idaho, kills 91.source
• 1972May 5 – An Alitalia DC-8 crashes west of Palermo, Sicily; 115 die.source
• 1972May 13 – A fire in a nightclub atop the Sennichi department store in Osaka, Japan, kills 115.source
• 1972May 21 – In St. Peter's Basilica (Vatican City), Laszlo Toth attacks Michelangelo's Pietà statue with a geologist's hammer, shouting that he is Jesus Christ.source
• 1972June 14 – Japan Airlines Flight 471 crashes outside New Delhi airport, killing 82 of 87 occupants.source
• 1972June 18 – Staines air disaster: 118 die when a British European Airways Trident 1 jet airliner crashes two minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow Airport.source
• 1972July 1 – The Canadian ketch Vega, flying the Greenpeace III banner, collides with the French naval minesweeper La Paimpolaise while in international waters to protest French nuclear weapon tests in the South Pacific.source
• 1972July 21 – A collision between two trains near Seville, Spain, kills 76 people.source
• 1972Claudy bombing ("Bloody Monday"), 10:00 AM : Three car bombs in Claudy, County Londonderry, kill nine. It becomes public knowledge only in 2010 that a local Catholic priest was an IRA officer believed to be involved in the bombings but his role was covered up by the authorities.source
• 1972August 12 – Oil tankers Oswego-Guardian and Texanita collide near Stilbaai, South Africa.source
• 1972August 14 – An East German Ilyushin airliner crashes near East Berlin; all 156 on board perish.source
• 1972September 24 – An F-86 fighter aircraft leaving an air show at Sacramento Executive Airport fails to become airborne and crashes into a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour, killing 12 children and 11 adults.source
• 1972October 6 – A train crash in Saltillo, Mexico, kills 208 people.source
• 1972October 13 – Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571: A Fairchild FH-227D passenger aircraft transporting a rugby union team crashes at about 14000 ft m in the Andes mountain range, near the Argentina/Chile border. Sixteen of the survivors are found alive December 20 but they have had to resort to cannibalism to survive.source
• 1972December 8 – United Airlines Flight 553 crashes short of a runway in Chicago, killing 43 of 61 passengers and two people on the ground. A day later, over $10,000 cash is found in the purse of Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt's wife, who was on board.source
• 1972December 23 – Asker accident: Braathens SAFE Flight 239 crashes during approach to Oslo Airport, Fornebu, Norway; forty people on board are killed.source
• 1972December 29 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashes into the Everglades in Florida, killing 101 of 176 on board. It is the first hull loss of a wide-body aircraft.source
• 1973January 22 – A Royal Jordanian Boeing 707 flight from Jeddah crashes in Kano, Nigeria; 176 people are killed.source
• 1973February 21 – Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 (Boeing 727) is shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft over the Sinai Desert, after the passenger plane is suspected of being an enemy military plane. There are 108 fatalities, and only five people on board survive (one crew member and four passengers).source
• 1973March 21 – The Lofthouse Colliery disaster occurs in Great Britain. Seven miners are trapped underground; none survive.source
• 1973June 3 – A Tupolev Tu-144 crashes at the Paris air show; 15 are killed.source
• 1973June 24 – UpStairs Lounge arson attack, an as-yet unsolved attack on a gay bar in New Orleans, Louisiana, in which 32 patrons are killed.source
• 1973June 26 – At Plesetsk Cosmodrome, nine people are killed in the explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket.source
• 1973July 11 – Varig Flight 820 crashes near Orly, France; 123 people are killed.source
• 1973July 23 – The Avianca Building in Bogotá, Colombia, suffers a serious fire, in which four people are killed.source
• 1973August 2 – A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.source
• 1973September 20 – Jim Croce, Maury Muehleisen and four others are killed in a plane crash shortly after takeoff following a concert at Northwestern Louisiana University in Natchitoches.source
• 1973November 3 – Pan Am flight 160, a Boeing 707-321C, crashes at Logan International Airport, Boston, killing three people.source
• 1973November 29 – 104 people are killed in a Taiyo department store fire in Kumamoto, Kyūshū, Japan.source
• 1974February 1 – Fire breaks out in the Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brazil; 177 die, 293 are injured, 11 die later of their injuries.source
• 1974February 17 – Zamalek disaster: A soccer stampede occurs in Cairo, killing 49.source
• 1974March 3 – Turkish Airlines Flight 981, travelling from Paris to London, crashes in the woods near Paris, killing all 346 aboard. This was the deadliest aircraft accident in history up to this time, and remains the deadliest single aircraft accident with no survivors.source
• 1974July 19 – Railcar explosion in Decatur, Illinois. A tanker car collides with a Norfolk & Western boxcar. Seven people are killed, 349 are injured and $18 million in property damage.source
• 1974August 4 – A bomb explodes in a train between Italy and West Germany, killing twelve and wounding 48.source
• 1974August 30 – An express train bound for Germany from Belgrade derails in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), killing more than 150 passengers.source
• 1974August 30 – The Mitsubishi Heavy Industries building in Tokyo is bombed by radical far-left terrorists, killing 8 and wounding more than 376.source
• 1974September 8 – TWA Flight 841 crashes into the Ionian Sea 18 minutes after takeoff from Athens on an Israel–New York flight after a bomb explodes in the cargo hold, and kills 88 people.source
• 1974November 20 – Lufthansa Flight 540 crashes in Nairobi, Kenya, due to a mechanical failure, killing 59 of its 157 occupants.source
• 1975February 28 – A major tube train crash at Moorgate station, London kills 43 people.source
• 1975April 4 – Vietnam War: The first military Operation Babylift flight, C5A 80218, crashes 27 minutes after takeoff, killing 138 on board; 176 survive the crash.source
• 1975April 18 – The Khmer Rouge begins a forcible mass evacuation of the city and starts the Cambodian genocide.source
• 1975May 27 – The Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, North Yorkshire, England, results in 32 deaths (the highest toll in a United Kingdom road accident).source
• 1975October 14 – A British Royal Air Force Avro Vulcan bomber explodes and crashes over Żabbar, Malta after an aborted landing, killing five crew members and one person on the ground.source
• 1975November 7 – A vapor cloud explosion at a petroleum cracking facility in Geleen, Netherlands, leaves 14 dead and 109 injured, with fires lasting for five days.source
• 1975November 10 – The 729 ft m-long freighter sinks during a storm 27 km mi from the entrance to Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board (an event immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot).source
• 1975December 29 – A bomb explosion at LaGuardia Airport in New York City kills 11 people.source
• 1976January 16 – A locomotive crashes into the rear of a commuter train in Glenbrook, Australia, killing one person onboard and injuring ten others in the 1976 Glenbrook rail accident.source
• 1976March 9 – A cable car disaster occurs when a supporting cable breaks in Cavalese, Italy, resulting in 43 deaths.source
• 1976March 9–11 – Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, in Letcher County, Kentucky.source
• 1976April 13 – The Lapua Cartridge Factory explosion in Lapua, Finland kills 40.source
• 1976April 29 – Sino-Soviet split: A concealed bomb explodes at the gates of the Soviet embassy in China, killing four Chinese. The targets were embassy employees, returning from lunch, but on this day they had returned to the embassy earlier.source
• 1976May 4 – A train crash in Schiedam, the Netherlands, kills 24 people.source
• 1976May 21 – The Yuba City bus disaster, the second-worst bus crash in U.S. history, leaves 28 students and one teacher killed.source
• 1976June 2 – A car bomb fatally injures Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.source
• 1976June 5 – The Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the US, killing 11 people.source
• 1976June 6 – The Double Six Crash, a plane crash in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, kills everyone on board, including Sabahan Chief Minister Tun Fuad Stephens.source
• 1976July 10 – Seveso disaster: An explosion at a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, causes extensive pollution to a large area in the neighborhood of Milan, with many evacuations and a large number of people affected by the toxic cloud.source
• 1976September 3 – A Lockheed C-130 Hercules of the Venezuelan Air Force crashed near Lajes Field, Azores Islands, Portugal, killing all 68 occupants on board.source
• 1976September 10 – Zagreb mid-air collision: A British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (modern-day Zagreb, Croatia), killing all 176 aboard.source
• 1976September 16 – Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan reservoir.source
• 1976October 6 – Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Fidel Castro terrorists, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados; all 73 people on board are killed.source
• 1976October 20 – The Mississippi River ferry MV George Prince is struck by a ship while crossing from Destrehan, Louisiana to Luling, Louisiana, killing 78 passengers and crew.source
• 1977January 17 – 49 Navy and Marine enlisted members on a landing craft from the and are killed by a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain.source
• 1977January 18 – SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina.source
• 1977January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board.source
• 1977February 4 – Eleven CTA commuters are killed when an elevated train derails from the Loop in central Chicago, United States.source
• 1977March 27 – Tenerife disaster: A collision between KLM and Pan Am Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, kills 583 people. This becomes the deadliest accident in aviation history.source
• 1977April 4 – Southern Airways Flight 242 crashes on a highway in New Hope, Georgia, United States, killing 72 people.source
• 1977May 14 – An IAS Cargo Boeing 707 airplane crash in Lusaka, Zambia, kills all six on board.source
• 1977May 27 – The 1977 Aeroflot Ilyushin 62 airplane crash in Cuba kills 69 people.source
• 1977May 28 – The Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, United States, is engulfed in fire; 165 are killed inside.source
• 1977July 13 – New York City is affected by a complete electricity blackout lasting through the following day that results in citywide looting and other criminal activity, including arson.source
• 1977October 13 – German Autumn: Four Palestinians hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demand the release of 11 Red Army Faction members.source
• 1977November 19 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes at Madeira Airport, Funchal, Portugal, killing 131 and leaving 33 survivors.source
• 1977December 4 – Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 is hijacked and crashes in Tanjung Kupang, Johor, Malaysia, killing all 100 passengers and crew on board.source
• 1977December 13 – a chartered Douglas DC-3 aircraft carrying the University of Evansville basketball team to Nashville, Tennessee, crashes in rain and dense fog about 90 seconds after takeoff from Evansville Regional Airport; 29 people die in the crash, including 14 members of the team and head coach Bob Watson.source
• 1977December 18 – SA de Transport Aérien Flight 730, an international charter service from Zurich to Funchal Airport (Madeira), hits the sea during a landing attempt. Many of the 36 who die drown, trapped inside the sinking aircraft. Twenty-one people survive with the help of rescuers and by swimming to the shore.source
• 1977December 22 – A grain elevator explodes in Westwego, Louisiana, United States, killing 36 people.source
• 1978January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.source
• 1978February 11 – Pacific Western Airlines Flight 314, a Boeing 737-200, crashes in Cranbrook, British Columbia, killing 44 of the 50 people on board.source
• 1978February 13 – Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing: A bomb explodes outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing a policeman and two civilians, and injuring several other people.source
• 1978March 17 – An oil tanker, Amoco Cadiz, runs aground on the coast of Brittany.source
• 1978April 7 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter decides to postpone production of the neutron bomb, a weapon that kills people with radiation, but leaves buildings relatively intact.source
• 1978April 20 – A Soviet air defense plane shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 902; the plane makes an emergency landing on a frozen lake.source
• 1978June 2 – Japan Air Lines 115 had its tail struck on the runway on the airport it landed in. The same aircraft would be involved in a 2nd accident 7 years latersource
• 1978July 11 – At least 217 tourists die in an explosion of a tanker-truck at a campsite in Costa Daurada, Spain.source
• 1978September 25 – PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727, collides with a small private airplane and crashes in San Diego, California; 144 are killed.source
• 1978October 21 – Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 Skylane over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.source
• 1978November 26 – Two British commercial divers, Michael Ward and Tony Prangley, die of hypothermia and drowning in the East Shetland Basin after their diving bell plunges to the seabed at a depth of over 100 m.source
• 1978December 16 – Train 87 from Nanjing to Xining collides with train 368 from Xi'an to Xuzhou near Yangzhuang railway station in China, killing 106, injuring 218.source
• 1979January 8 – Whiddy Island Disaster: The French tanker Betelgeuse explodes at the Gulf Oil terminal at Bantry, Ireland; 50 people are killed.source
• 1979February 15 – A suspected gas explosion in a Warsaw bank kills 49 people.source
• 1979February 27 – The Soviet oil tanker Antonio Gramsci suffers a minor shipwreck in shallow waters shortly after leaving shore in Ventspils, resulting in a 5,000 ton oil spill, the largest that has ever occurred on the Baltic Sea.source
• 1979March 14 – In China, a Hawker Siddeley Trident crashes into a factory near Beijing, killing 31 people on the ground and injuring 200.source
• 1979March 18 – Ten miners die in a methane gas explosion at Golborne Colliery near Wigan, Greater Manchester, England.source
• 1979March 28 – America's most serious nuclear power plant accident occurs, at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.source
• 1979April 2 – Sverdlovsk anthrax leak: A Soviet biowarfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 plus an unknown amount of livestock. It is a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.source
• 1979May 8 – Ten shoppers die in a fire at the Woolworths department store in Manchester city centre in the UK.source
• 1979May 9 – The Unabomber bomb injures Northwestern University graduate student John Harris.source
• 1979May 25 – American Airlines Flight 191: In Chicago, a DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport, killing all 271 on board and 2 people on the ground in the deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history.source
• 1979June 3 – Ixtoc I oil spill: A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 600,000 tons (176,400,000 gallons) of oil to be spilled into the waters, the worst oil spill to date. Some estimate the spill to be 428 million gallons, making it the largest unintentional oil spill until it is surpassed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.source
• 1979July 12 – A fire at a hotel in Zaragoza, Spain, leaves 72 dead, the worst hotel fire in Europe in decades.source
• 1979July 12 – A Disco Demolition Night publicity stunt goes awry at Comiskey Park, forcing the Chicago White Sox to forfeit their game against the Detroit Tigers.source
• 1979August 8 – Two American commercial divers, Richard Walker and Victor Guiel, die of hypothermia after their diving bell becomes stranded at a depth of over 160 m in the East Shetland Basin. The legal repercussions of the accident will lead to important safety changes in the diving industry.source
• 1979October 31 – Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashes upon landing at Mexico City International Airport, killing 72 occupants plus one on the ground; 16 people on board survive.source
• 1979November 10 – 1979 Mississauga train derailment: A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, just west of Toronto, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.source
• 1979November 28 – Air New Zealand Flight 901: an Air New Zealand DC-10 crashes into Mount Erebus in Antarctica on a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board.source
• 1979December 3 – The Who concert disaster: Eleven fans are killed during a crowd crush for unreserved seats before The Who rock concert at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati.source
• 1979Worldwide per capita oil production reaches a historic peak.source
• 1980January 20 – At least 200 people are killed when the Corralejas Bullring collapses at Sincelejo, Colombia.source
• 1980March 14 – LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crashes during an emergency landing near Warsaw, Poland, killing a 14-man American boxing team and 73 others.source
• 1980March 19–20 – The , the ship housing pirate radio station Radio Caroline, sinks off the English coast (the station returns aboard a new ship in 1983).source
• 1980March 26 – A mine lift cage at the Vaal Reefs gold mine in South Africa falls 1.9 km mi, killing 23 workers.source
• 1980March 27 – The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.source
• 1980April 24–25 – Operation Eagle Claw, a commando mission in Iran to rescue American embassy hostages, is aborted after mechanical problems ground the rescue helicopters. Eight United States troops are killed in a mid-air collision during the failed operation.source
• 1980April 25 – Dan-Air Flight 1008 crashes in Tenerife, killing all 146 occupants; at the time it was the worst air disaster involving a British-registered aircraft in terms of loss of life.source
• 1980May 9 – James Alexander George Smith "Jags" McCartney the Turks and Caicos Islands' first chief minister, is killed in a plane crash over New Jersey.source
• 1980May 9 – In Florida, United States, the Liberian freighter Summit Venture hits the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. A 1,400 foot m section of the bridge collapses and 35 people (most of them on a bus) are killed.source
• 1980May 28 – A fiery bus crash near the small village of Webb, Saskatchewan, Canada, claims 22 lives.source
• 1980June 23–September 6 – The 1980 United States heat wave claims 1,700 lives.source
• 1980June 23 – Sanjay Gandhi, the politically influential son of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, is killed in a plane crash.source
• 1980June 27 – Itavia Flight 870 crashes into the sea near Ustica island, Italy, killing all 81 people on board. The cause of the accident remains unclear.source
• 1980August 19 – In one of aviation's worst disasters, 301 people are killed when Saudia Flight 163 catches fire in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.source
• 1980September 26 – The Mariel boatlift in Cuba officially ends.source
• 1980October 5 – The Elisabeth blast furnace is demolished at Bilston Steelworks, marking the end of iron and steel production in the Black Country region of the U.K.source
• 1980November 21 – A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip kills 85 people.source
• 1981January 27 – The Indonesian passenger ship Tampomas II catches fire and capsizes in the Java Sea, killing 580 people.source
• 1981January to March – Heavy snow causes several houses and buildings to collapse in northwestern Japan; 152 are killed.source
• 1981February 8 – In Greece, 20 fans of Olympiacos F.C. and 1 fan of AEK Athens die, while 54 are injured, after a stampede at the Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus, possibly because Gate 7 does not open immediately after the end of the game.source
• 1981February 14 – Stardust fire: A fire at the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Dublin, Ireland, in the early hours kills 48 young people and injures 214. In 2024 these will be declared as unlawful killings.source
• 1981March 19 – Two or three workers are killed and four are injured during a ground test of Space Shuttle Columbia at Kennedy Space Center in the United States.source
• 1981May 31 – Burning of Jaffna library, one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the century.source
• 1981June 6 – Bihar train disaster: Seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train fall off the tracks into the Bagmati River in Bihar, India, killing between 500 and 800.source
• 1981July 17 – Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: Two skywalks filled with people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapse into a crowded atrium lobby, killing 114.source
• 1981August 30 – 1981 Iranian Prime Minister's office bombing: Eight people, including the country's president and prime minister, are killed when a briefcase explodes in the building. The office of Iran's Prosecutor General blames the People's Mujahedin of Iran.source
• 1981September 4 – An explosion at a mine in Záluží, Czechoslovakia, kills 65 people.source
• 1981September 15 – Our Lady of Akita in Japan cries for the last time, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.source
• 1981September 20 – The overcrowded ferry boat Sobral Santos II capsizes in the Amazon River, Óbidos, Brazil, killing at least 300 people.source
• 1981September 22 – A Northrop F-5 crashes during a military exercise, in Babaeski, Turkey, killing 1 crew and 65 soldiers on ground.source
• 1981October 16 – Gas explosions at a coal mine at Hokutan, Yūbari, Hokkaidō, Japan, kill 93 people.source
• 1981October 27 – Soviet submarine S-363 runs aground outside the Karlskrona, Sweden, military base, leading to a minor international incident.source
• 1981December 1 – An Inex-Adria Aviopromet McDonnell Douglas MD-80 strikes a mountain peak and crashes while approaching Ajaccio Airport in Corsica, killing all 180 people on board.source
• 1981December 8 – The No. 21 Mine explosion in Whitwell, Tennessee, kills 13.source
• 1981December 15 – 1981 Iraqi embassy bombing in Beirut: An Islamic Dawa Party car bomb destroys the Iraqi Embassy in Lebanon, killing 61 people in one of the earliest significant post-World War II suicide attacks.source
• 1981December 20 – The Penlee lifeboat disaster: While attempting to rescue those on board the Union Star off the coast of South-West Cornwall (England), the lifeboat Solomon Browne is lost with all crew. Sixteen people in all are killed.source
• 1982January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., United States, then falls into the Potomac River, killing 78 people.source
• 1982January 14 – An Ethiopian Air Force Antonov An-26 with an unknown registration crashed near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing all 73 occupants on board.source
• 1982January 18 – 1982 Thunderbirds Indian Springs Diamond Crash: Four Northrop T-38 aircraft of the United States Air Force crash at Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field, Nevada, killing all 4 pilots.source
• 1982February 3 – Syrian president Hafez al-Assad orders the army to purge the city of Harran of the Muslim Brotherhood.source
• 1982February 5 – London-based Laker Airways collapses, leaving 6,000 stranded passengers and debts of £270 million.source
• 1982February 9 – Japan Airlines Flight 350 crashes in Tokyo Bay due to thrust reversal on approach to Tokyo International Airport, killing 24 among the 174 people on board.source
• 1982February 15 – The oil platform Ocean Ranger sinks during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing all 84 rig workers aboard.source
• 1982May 2 – Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine sinks the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, killing 323 sailors. Operation Algeciras, an attempt to destroy a Royal Navy warship in Gibraltar, fails.source
• 1982May 4 – Falklands War: is hit by an Argentine Exocet missile and burns out of control; 20 sailors are killed. The ship sinks on May 10.source
• 1982May 21 – Falklands War: is sunk by Argentine aircraft, killing 22 sailors.source
• 1982May 25 – British ships and are sunk during the Falklands War; Coventry by two A-4C Skyhawks and Atlantic Conveyor by two Exocets.source
• 1982June 8 – VASP Flight 168, a Boeing 727 passenger jet, crashes into a forest hillside in Fortaleza in Brazil, killing 137.source
• 1982July 9 – Pan Am Flight 759 (Boeing 727) crashes in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 146 on board and 8 on the ground.source
• 1982July 23 – Twilight Zone accident: During filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, actor Vic Morrow and 2 child actors die in a helicopter stunt accident in California.source
• 1982July 31 – Beaune coach crash: In Beaune, France, 53 persons, 46 of them children, die in a highway accident (France's worst).source
• 1982October 11 – The Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII of England that sank in 1545, is raised from the Solent.source
• 1982October 12 – The Saudi Arabian cargo ship Elhawi Star, transporting 3,631 tonnes of ceramic tiles and 781 tonnes of lumber to Chioggia, sank while being towed away from the Port of Rijeka by the tugboats Beli Kamik and Aries because of the unevenly distributed cargo.source
• 1983February 16 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim the lives of 75 people, in one of Australia's worst bushfire disasters.source
• 1983April 18 – The 1983 United States embassy bombing in Beirut kills 63 people.source
• 1983April 22 – A reactor shutdown due to failure of fuel rods occurs at Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, Russia.source
• 1983May 27 – Benton fireworks disaster. An explosion at an unlicensed and illegal fireworks operation near Benton, Tennessee, kills eleven and injures one. The blast is heard within a radius of 20 mi km.source
• 1983June 11 – The Italian cargo ship Michelle ran aground just northwest of Dugi Otok.source
• 1983July 1 – A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet, en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea, crashes into the Fouta Djall Mountains of Guinea, killing all 23 people on board.source
• 1983July 1 – A technical failure causes the release of iodine-131 from the Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant, Germany.source
• 1983July 16 – Sikorsky S-61 disaster: A helicopter crashes off the Isles of Scilly, causing 20 fatalities.source
• 1983July 23 – Heavy rain and mudslides in western Shimane Prefecture, Japan, kill 117.source
• 1983September 1 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by Soviet Union Air Force Su-15 Flagon pilot Major Gennadi Osipovich near Moneron Island when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board are killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.source
• 1983September 6 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.source
• 1983September 23 – Gulf Air Flight 771 crashes in the United Arab Emirates after a bomb explodes in the baggage compartment, killing 117.source
• 1983November 5 – Byford Dolphin rig diving bell accident: Off the coast of Norway, 5 divers are killed and 1 is severely wounded in an explosive decompression accident.source
• 1983November 19 – An attempted hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 6833 in Soviet Georgia results in several dead and wounded.source
• 1983November 27 – Colombian Avianca Flight 011 crashes near Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain, killing 181 of the 192 on board.source
• 1983December 7 – Two Spanish passenger planes collide on the foggy runway at a Madrid airport, killing 93 people.source
• 1983December 17 – The Alcalá 20 nightclub fire in Madrid, Spain, injuring 47 and killing 83 people.source
• 1983December 17 – Harrods bombings: a Provisional IRA car bomb kills 6 people and injures 90 outside Harrods department store in London.source
• 1983December 31 – Two bombs explode in France: one on a Paris train kills three and injures 19; the other at Marseille station kills two and injures 34.source
• 1984March 12 – The National Union of Mineworkers strikes as tens of thousands of miners in the United Kingdom stop working in protest over colliery closures, starting the United Kingdom miners' strike that lasts a year.source
• 1984May 13 – Severomorsk Disaster: an explosion at the Soviets' Severomorsk Naval Base destroys two-thirds of all the missiles stockpiled for the Soviets' Northern Fleet. The blast also destroys workshops needed to maintain the missiles as well as hundreds of technicians. Western military experts called it the worst naval disaster the Soviet Navy has suffered since WWII.source
• 1984May 23 – A methane gas explosion at Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, UK, kills 16 people.source
• 1984August 11 – Barefoot South African runner Zola Budd and Mary Decker of the U.S. collide in the Olympic 3000 meters final, neither finishing as medallists.source
• 1984October 11 – Aeroflot Flight 3352 crashes at Omsk Airport into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and 4 on the ground.source
• 1984October 19 – Wapiti Aviation Flight 402 crashes into terrain 40 km mi southeast of High Prairie, Alberta, Canada. Six are killed including leader of the Alberta NDP, Grant Notley, while the four survivors are later rescued the next day.source
• 1984November 19 – A series of explosions at the Pemex Petroleum Storage Facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec, in Mexico City, ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.source
• 1984December 3 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.source
• 1984December 4 – Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane and kill 4 passengers.source
• 1984December 28 – A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Lake Inari in Finnish Lapland, known as the Lake Inari missile incident. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985.source
• 1985February 19 – China Airlines Flight 006 is involved in a mid-air incident; while there are 22 minor injuries and 2 serious injuries, no one is killed.source
• 1985February 19 – Iberia Airlines Flight 610 crashes, killing all 148 on board.source
• 1985May 11 – Bradford City stadium fire: A fire engulfs a wooden stand at the Valley Parade stadium in Bradford, England, during an Association football match, killing 56 people.source
• 1985June 14 – TWA Flight 847, carrying 153 passengers from Athens to Rome, is hijacked by a Hezbollah fringe group. One passenger, U.S. Navy Petty Officer Robert Stethem, is killed. Greek police arrest a 65-year-old Lebanese suspect on September 21, 2019.source
• 1985June 23 – Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747, is blown up by a terrorist bomb 31,000 feet (9,500 m) above the Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, on a Montreal–London–Delhi flight, killing all 329 aboard.source
• 1985July 10 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland Harbour by French DGSE agents.source
• 1985July 10 – Aeroflot Flight 5143 crashes near Uchquduq, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union, killing all 200 people on board.source
• 1985July 19 – The Val di Stava dam collapses in Italy, killing 268 people, destroying 63 buildings, and demolishing eight bridges.source
• 1985August 2 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashes near Dallas, Texas, United States, killing 137 people.source
• 1985August 12 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashes in Japan, killing 520 people, including Japanese singer Kyu Sakamoto; it is the worst single-aircraft disaster in aviation history. There were only 4 survivors.source
• 1985August 22 – British Airtours Flight 28M: The 737's left engine catches fire while on its takeoff roll at Manchester Airport in the UK and 55 people are killed while trying to evacuate the aircraft.source
• 1985August 25 – Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 crashes in the United States, killing all 8 on board, including thirteen-year-old American celebrity schoolgirl Samantha Smith.source
• 1985September 6 – Midwest Express Airlines Flight 105, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, crashes just after takeoff from Milwaukee, killing all 31 on board.source
• 1985October 16 – The Finnish dry cargo ship MS Hanna-Marjut, on its way from Mariehamn to Naantali, sinks in hard sea on the open water of Kihti between the Kökar and Sottunga islands of Åland, leading to the drowning of four people.source
• 1985November 23 – EgyptAir Flight 648 is hijacked by the Abu Nidal group and flown to Malta, where Egyptian commandos storm the plane; 60 are killed by gunfire and explosions.source
• 1985November 25 – 1985 Aeroflot Antonov An-12 shoot-down: A Soviet Aeroflot Antonov An-12 cargo airplane, en route from Cuito Cuanavale to Luanda, is shot down by South African Special Forces and crashes approximately 43 km mi east of Menongue, the provincial center of the Cuando Cubango Province, Angola, killing 8 crew members and 13 passengers on board.source
• 1985December 11 – Hugh Scrutton is killed outside his Sacramento, California, computer rental store by a Unabomber explosive, becoming the first fatality of the bombing campaign.source
• 1985December 12 – Arrow Air Flight 1285R, a Douglas DC-8, crashes after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing 256 people – 248 of whom were U.S. servicemen returning to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after overseeing a peacekeeping force in the Sinai Peninsula.source
• 1985December 27 – Rome and Vienna airport attacks: Abu Nidal terrorists open fire in the airports of Rome and Vienna, leaving 18 dead and 120 injured.source
• 1986January 28 – Space Shuttle Challenger disaster – STS-51-L: Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch from the United States, killing the crew of seven astronauts, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.source
• 1986February 8 – Hinton train collision: A Canadian National train heading westbound collides with a Via Rail train in Hinton, Alberta; 23 people are killed and 71 injured in the accident.source
• 1986February 16 – The Soviet liner sinks in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.source
• 1986March 9 – United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger; the bodies of all seven astronauts are still inside.source
• 1986March 15 – Hotel New World collapses; 33 were killed and 17 rescued from rubble.source
• 1986March 27 – Russell Street Bombing: A car bomb explodes at Russell Street Police Headquarters in Russell Street, Melbourne, killing a woman constable, the first Australian policewoman to be killed in the line of duty.source
• 1986March 31 – Mexicana Flight 940 crashes near Maravatío, Mexico, killing 167.source
• 1986April 2 – A bomb explodes on a Trans World Airlines flight from Rome to Athens, killing 4 people.source
• 1986April 14 – Hailstones weighing 1 kg lb fall on Gopalganj District, Bangladesh, killing 92.source
• 1986April 15 – Operation El Dorado Canyon: At least 15 people die after United States planes bomb targets in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and the Benghazi region.source
• 1986April 26 – Chernobyl disaster: A mishandled safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union "killed at least 4,056 people and damaged almost $7 billion of property". Radioactive fallout from the accident is concentrated near Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 350,000 people are forcibly resettled away from these areas. After the accident, "traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere".source
• 1986May 25 – The Bangladeshi double-decked ferry Shamia capsizes in the Meghna River, southern Barisal, Bangladesh, killing more than 500 by some estimates.source
• 1986June 9 – The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.source
• 1986June 14 – Fantasyland's Mindbender derails and kills three people.source
• 1986August 31 – The Soviet passenger liner collides with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Black Sea and sinks almost immediately, killing 398.source
• 1986August 31 – Aeroméxico Flight 498, a Douglas DC-9, collides with a Piper PA-28 over Cerritos, California, killing 82 (67 on both aircraft and 15 on the ground).source
• 1986September 5 – Pan Am Flight 73, with 358 people on board, is hijacked at Karachi International Airport by four Abu Nidal terrorists.source
• 1986October 19 – Mozambican President Samora Machel's plane crashes in South Africa, killing him and 33 and others.source
• 1986October 22 – In New York City, WNBC Radio's traffic helicopter crashes into the Hudson River, killing traffic reporter Jane Dornacker. The last words heard on-the-air are Dornacker's screams of terror, "Hit the water! Hit the water! Hit the water!"source
• 1986November 6 – 45 people are killed in the 1986 British International Helicopters Chinook crash.source
• 1986December 4 – The MV Amazon Venture oil tanker begins leaking oil while at the port of Savannah in the United States, resulting in an oil spill of approximately 500,000 gal L.source
• 1986December 31 – Dupont Plaza Hotel arson: A hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 97 and injures 140.source
• 1987January 4 – 1987 Maryland train collision: An Amtrak train en route from Washington, D.C. to Boston collides with Conrail engines at Chase, Maryland, United States, killing 16 people.source
• 1987January 17 – The Jumalan teatteri ("The theatre of God") theatre students' group cause a huge scandal at the Oulu City Theatre in Oulu, Finland by throwing excrement, eggs and yoghurt on the audience during their two-minute performance.source
• 1987February 6 – The Soviet oil tanker Antonio Gramsci suffers a minor shipwreck in Finnish waters en route to the Neste oil refinery in Porvoo, resulting in an oil spill of approximately 570–650 tons.source
• 1987February 20 – A second Unabomber bomb explodes at a Salt Lake City computer store parking lot in the United States, injuring the owner's son.source
• 1987April 5 – Schoharie Creek Bridge Collapse: I-90 bridge collapse near Fort Hunter leaves 10 people dead. Investigators conclude that the bridge's piers had been weakened by structural flaws and significant scour. The accident leads to stricter safety standards in bridge design and inspection. The body of the 10th victim will ultimately be recovered from the Mohawk River more than two years later.source
• 1987May 9 – A Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-62 airliner, operated by LOT Polish Airlines, crashes into a forest just outside Warsaw, killing all 183 people on board.source
• 1987June 27 – A commercial HS 748 (Philippine Airlines Flight 206) crashes near Baguio, Philippines, killing 50.source
• 1987July 8 – A Delta Air Lines L-1011 strays 60 miles off course and nearly collides with a Continental Airlines 747 over the Atlantic Ocean. The two planes are carrying nearly 600 total passengers and may have come within 100 feet of each other.source
• 1987July 27 – Salvage dives begin on the wreck of the Titanic; survivor Eva Hart likens the salvage teams to "vultures."source
• 1987August 16 – Northwest Airlines Flight 255 (a McDonnell Douglas MD-82) crashes on takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan, just west of Detroit, killing all but one (4-year-old Cecelia Cichan) of the 156 people on board.source
• 1987October 19 – Two commuter trains collide head-on on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia; 102 are killed.source
• 1987October 22 – The pilot of a British Aerospace BAE Harrier GR5 registered ZD325 accidentally ejects from his aircraft. The jet continues to fly until it runs out of fuel and crashes into the Irish Sea.source
• 1987November 18 – The King's Cross fire on the London Underground kills 31 people and injures a further 100.source
• 1987November 28 – South African Airways Flight 295 crashes into the Indian Ocean off Mauritius, due to a fire in the cargo hold; the 159 passengers and crew perish.source
• 1987November 29 – Korean Air Flight 858 is blown up over the Andaman Sea, killing 115 crew and passengers. North Korean agents are responsible for the bombing.source
• 1987December 7 – Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, United States, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-supervisor on the flight, then shoots both pilots.source
• 1987December 8 – Alianza Lima air disaster: A Peruvian Navy Fokker F27 crashes near Ventanilla, Peru, killing 43.source
• 1987December 20 – In history's worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).source
• 1988January – The cargo ship Khian Sea deposits 4,000 tons of toxic waste in Haiti after wandering around the Atlantic for sixteen months.source
• 1988February 17 – 1988 Oshakati bomb blast: A bomb explodes outside the First National Bank in Oshakati, Namibia, killing 27 and injuring 70.source
• 1988March 17 – A Colombian Boeing 727 jetliner, Avianca Flight 410, crashes into the side of the mountains near the Venezuelan border, killing 143 people.source
• 1988April 1 – A bus carrying 54 passengers falls into the Han River in Seoul, South Korea killing 19 and injuring 35.source
• 1988April 5 – Kuwait Airways Flight 422 is hijacked while en route from Bangkok, Thailand, to Kuwait. The hijackers demand the release of 17 Shiite Muslim prisoners held by Kuwait. Kuwait refuses to release the prisoners, leading to a 16-day siege across 3 continents. Two passengers are killed before the siege ends.source
• 1988April 20 – The world's longest skyjacking comes to an end when the remaining passengers of Kuwait Airways Flight 422 are released by their captors.source
• 1988April 28 – Aloha Airlines Flight 243 safely lands after losing its roof in midair, killing a flight attendant and injuring 65 people.source
• 1988June 27 – The Gare de Lyon rail accident occurs in Paris, France as a commuter train headed inbound to the terminal crashes into a stationary outbound train, killing 56 and injuring 57.source
• 1988July 3 – Iran Air Flight 655 is shot down by a missile launched from the , killing a total of 290 people on board.source
• 1988July 6 – The Piper Alpha production platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires, killing 165 oil workers and 2 rescue mariners. 61 workers survive.source
• 1988August 17 – Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Lewis Raphel, are among those killed when a plane crashes and explodes near Bahawalpur.source
• 1988August 28 – Seventy people are killed and 346 injured in one of the worst air show disasters in history at Germany's Ramstein Air Base, when three jets from the Italian air demonstration team, Frecce Tricolori, collide, sending one of the aircraft crashing into the crowd of spectators.source
• 1988September 22 – The Ocean Odyssey drilling rig suffers a blowout and fire in the North Sea (see also July 6), resulting in one death.source
• 1988December 12 – The Clapham Junction rail crash in London kills 35 and injures 132.source
• 1988December 21 – Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a total of 270 people. Libya is suspected of involvement.source
• 1989January 4 – Gulf of Sidra incident (1989): Two Libyan MiG-23 "Floggers" are engaged and shot down by two US Navy F-14 Tomcats.source
• 1989January 8 – British Midland Flight 092 (a Boeing 737-400) crashes on an M1 motorway near the East Midlands Airport, 47 people were killed and 79 people survived.source
• 1989February 14 – Union Carbide agrees to pay $470,000,000 to the Indian government for damages in the 1984 Bhopal disaster, a gas leak that killed 3.7 thousand.source
• 1989February 16 – Pan Am Flight 103: Investigators announce that the cause of the 1988 crash was a bomb hidden inside a radio-cassette player.source
• 1989February 24 – United Airlines Flight 811, a Boeing 747, suffers uncontrolled decompression after leaving Honolulu International Airport; nine passengers are blown out of the cabin to their deaths.source
• 1989March 4 – The Purley station rail crash in London leaves five people dead and 94 injured.source
• 1989March 24 – Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Alaska's Prince William Sound, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl m3 of oil after running aground.source
• 1989April 7 – The Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea, killing 41.source
• 1989April 15 – The Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in European football, claims the lives of 94 Liverpool F.C. supporters in Sheffield, England, a further three dying later.source
• 1989April 19 – The USS Iowa turret explodes on the U.S. battleship Iowa, killing 47 crew members.source
• 1989May 12–25 – San Bernardino train disaster: Southern Pacific freight locomotive SP 7551 East derails in a residential area of San Bernardino, California, killing four and destroying seven houses. On May 25, as a direct result of the derailment, the Calnev Pipeline explodes, killing an additional two people and destroying eleven more houses and 21 cars.source
• 1989June 8 – The wreck of German battleship Bismarck, which was sunk in 1941, is located about 600 mi km west of Brest, France.source
• 1989July 19 – United Airlines Flight 232 (Douglas DC-10) crashes in Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112; 184 on board survive.source
• 1989July 21 – Philippine Airlines Flight 124 crashes on approach at Ninoy Aquino International Airport while attempting to land and overrun the runway, everyone survives in the crash but eight people are killed on the ground.source
• 1989August 7 – U.S. Representative Mickey Leland (D-TX) and fifteen others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.source
• 1989August 13 – 1989 Alice Springs hot air balloon crash: An accident near Alice Springs, Australia kills thirteen people.source
• 1989August 20 – Marchioness disaster: Fifty-one people die when a pleasure boat collides with a dredger on the River Thames adjacent to Southwark Bridge in London.source
• 1989September 8 – Partnair Flight 394 crashes into the North Sea with the loss of 125 lives. The accident was due to the structural failure of the rudder of the Convair 580 caused by the use of counterfeit aircraft parts.source
• 1989September 19 – UTA Flight 772 explodes over Niger, killing all 171 people on board (the Islamic Jihad Organization claims responsibility).source
• 1989October 23 – The Phillips disaster, a chemical plant explosion, in Pasadena, Texas, kills 23 and injures 314 others.source
• 1989October 28 – Aloha Island Air Flight 1712, a Twin Otter 300, crashed into mountainous terrain at night during an approach to Molokai Airport killing all 20 occupants on board.source
• 1989November 27 – Colombian domestic passenger flight Avianca Flight 203 is bombed by the Medellín drug cartel in an (unsuccessful) attempt to kill presidential candidate for the 1990 elections César Gaviria Trujillo. All 107 people on board as well as three people on the ground are killed.source
• 1989December 12 – Hong Kong begins the forcible repatriation of Vietnamese boat people, starting with a group of 59 who are flown to Hanoi.source
• 1989December 22 – Two tourist coaches collide on the Pacific highway north of Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia, killing 35 people.source
• 1990January 25 – Avianca Flight 052 crashes into Cove Neck, New York after a miscommunication between the flight crew and JFK Airport officials, killing 73 people on board.source
• 1990January 29 – The trial of Joseph Hazelwood, former skipper of the Exxon Valdez, begins in Anchorage, Alaska. He is accused of negligence that resulted in America's second worst oil spill to date.source
• 1990February 14 – Indian Airlines Flight 605, an Airbus A320-231 registered as VT-EPN, crashes shortly before landing at Bangalore, killing 92 out of the 146 occupants on board.source
• 1990February 27 – Exxon Valdez oil spill: Exxon and its shipping company are indicted on 5 criminal counts.source
• 1990February 28 – Final day of the rum ration in the Royal New Zealand Navy, the last in any of the world's navies.source
• 1990March 1 – A fire at the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, kills 16 people.source
• 1990March 25 – In New York City, a fire due to arson at an illegal social club called "Happy Land" kills 87 people.source
• 1990April 7 – MS Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry, catches fire en route from Norway to Denmark, leaving 158 dead.source
• 1990June 9 – Mega Borg oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas.source
• 1990July 2 – 1990 Mecca tunnel tragedy: A stampede in a pedestrian tunnel leading to Mecca kills 1,426.source
• 1990July 21-22 – The Min Ping Yu No. 5540 incident occurs when the Taiwan Garrison Command forces 76 mainland Chinese illegal immigrants into sealed holds of a boat, causing 25 to die of suffocation.source
• 1990October 2 – According to The Civil Aviation of China, two commercial planes collide on the runway at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, Guangdong, China. The total death toll is 128; 53 people were wounded, 97 were rescued.source
• 1990November 14 – Alitalia Flight 404 crashes on approach to Zurich Airport, killing all 46 occupants.source
• 1990December 3 – 1990 Wayne County Airport runway collision: At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Northwest Airlines Flight 1482 (a McDonnell Douglas DC-9) collides with Northwest Airlines Flight 299 (a Boeing 727) on the runway, killing 8 passengers and 4 crew members.source
• 1990December 11 – A multi-vehicle traffic collision known as the 1990 Interstate 75 fog disaster occurs; 12 deaths and 42 were caused by this eventsource
• 1991January 18 – Eastern Air Lines shuts down after 62 years of operations, citing financial problems. Later on December 4, Pan American World Airways ceases its operations.source
• 1991February 1 – USAir Flight 1493 collides with a SkyWest Airlines Fairchild Metroliner at Los Angeles International Airport, killing 34 people.source
• 1991March 13 – The U.S. Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.source
• 1991March 14 – Escondida in Chile's Atacama Desert –which is to become the world's most productive copper mine– is officially inaugurated.source
• 1991April 4 – U.S. Senator John Heinz and six other people are killed when a helicopter collides with their plane over Merion, Pennsylvania.source
• 1991April 5 – Former U.S. Senator John Tower and 22 others are killed in an airplane crash in Brunswick, Georgia.source
• 1991April 10 – The Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy, resulting in 140 deaths with one survivor.source
• 1991May 26 – Lauda Air Boeing 767 crashes near Bangkok, Thailand, killing all 223 people on board.source
• 1991June 9 – A major collapse at the Emaswati Colliery in Swaziland traps 26 miners 65 meters below the surface; they are rescued 30 hours later.source
• 1991July 11 – Nigeria Airways Flight 2120, a Douglas DC-8 operated by Canadian airline Nolisair, catches fire and crashes soon after takeoff from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 261 people on board.source
• 1991August 4 – The cruise liner MTS Oceanos sinks off the coast of South Africa, leading to the rescue of all 571 passengers on board by SAAF helicopters.source
• 1991August 8 – The Warsaw radio mast, the tallest structure in the world at the time, collapses.source
• 1991September 3 – In Hamlet, North Carolina, a grease fire breaks out at the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant, killing 25 people.source
• 1991October 20 – A large suburban firestorm centered in Oakland Hills, California, kills 25 people and injures 150 others.source
• 1991November 14 – American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103 over Britain in 1988.source
• 1991December 4 – Pan Am is officially dissolved after 64 years of operationsource
• 1991December 15 – The Egyptian ferry sinks in the Red Sea, killing more than 450 people.source
• 1992January 7 – 1992 European Community Monitor Mission helicopter downing: A Yugoslav Air Force Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 attacks two Italian Army Agusta-Bell AB-206L LongRanger helicopters carrying observers from the European Community Monitor Mission. One crashes, killing five people on board. The other helicopter crash-lands, but its occupants survive.source
• 1992January 20 – Air Inter Flight 148, an Airbus A320-111, crashes in the Vosges Mountains near Barr, France, while circling to land at Strasbourg, France, killing 87 of the 96 people on board. Facing tough competition from French high-speed TGV trains, Air Inter had encouraged its pilots to fly at high speeds at low altitudes, and had not installed ground proximity warning systems on its airliners because such systems generated too many nuisance alarms during high-speed, low-altitude flight.source
• 1992March 25 – The International Atomic Energy Agency orders Iraq to destroy an industrial complex at Al Atheer that is being used to manufacture nuclear weapons.source
• 1992March 28 – The Shot (Duke–Kentucky): In what Sports Illustrated deemed the greatest college basketball game of all time, Christian Laettner sinks an overtime buzzer-beater to advance Duke to their fifth straight Final Four.source
• 1992April 22 – Fuel leaking into a sewer causes a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico; 215 are killed, 1,500 injured.source
• 1992May 9 – The Westray Mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, explodes, killing all 26 miners working the night shift.source
• 1992July 31 – China General Aviation Flight 7552 bound for Xiamen crashes soon after taking off from Nanjing Dajiaochang Airport, killing 108 of the 116 people on board.source
• 1992July 31 – Thai Airways International Flight 311, an Airbus A310-300, crashes into a mountain north of Kathmandu, Nepal killing all 113 people on board.source
• 1992September 28 – Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 crashes into a mountain while on approach to Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal. All 167 occupants on board were killed. The crash of PIA Flight 268 occurred just 2 months after Thai Airways International Flight 311 crashed into a mountain near Kathmandu under similar circumstances, killing all 113 occupants on board.source
• 1992October 4 – Israeli cargo plane El Al Flight 1862 crashes into residential buildings in Amsterdam's Bijlmermeer, Netherlands, after taking off from Schiphol Airport and losing two engines, killing all 4 people on board and 39 on the ground.source
• 1992October 21 – 150,000 coal miners march in London to protest government plans to close coal mines and reduce the number of miners.source
• 1992November 14 – In poor conditions caused by Cyclone Forrest, Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 crashes near Nha Trang, killing 30.source
• 1992November 18 – Russian president Boris Yeltsin releases the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of Korean Air Flight 007, which was shot down by the Soviets in 1983.source
• 1992November 24 – In China, China Southern Airlines Flight 3943, a China Southern Airlines domestic flight, crashes, killing all 141 people on board.source
• 1992December 6 – Demolition of Babri Masjid: Extremist Hindu activists in India demolish Babri Masjid – a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya which has been used as a temple since 1949 – leading to widespread communal violence, including the Bombay riots, in all killing over 1,500 people.source
• 1993January 14 – The Polish ferry sinks off the coast of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, killing 54 people.source
• 1993February 26 – World Trade Center bombing: In New York City, a van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six people and injuring over one thousand.source
• 1993March 5 – Macedonian Palair Flight 301, an F-100 on a flight to Zürich, crashes shortly after take-off from Skopje, killing 83 of the 97 on board.source
• 1993March 12 – 1993 Bombay bombings: Several bombs explode in Bombay, India, killing 257 and injuring hundreds more.source
• 1993April 27 – 1993 Zambia national football team plane crash: All members of the Zambia national football team die in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal.source
• 1993May 19 – SAM Colombia Flight 501, a Boeing 727-46, crashed during its approach to José María Córdova International Airport, Colombia, killing all 132 occupants on board.source
• 1993July 26 – Asiana Airlines Flight 733 crashes into Mt. Ungeo in Haenam, South Korea; 68 are killed.source
• 1993August 13 – More than 130 die in the collapse of Royal Plaza Hotel at Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand's worst hotel disaster.source
• 1993September 22 – Big Bayou Canot train disaster: A bridge collapses while the Amtrak Sunset Limited is in the process of crossing it, killing 47 people.source
• 1993October 9 – The South Korean ferry Seohae capsizes off Pusan, South Korea; 292 are killed.source
• 1993October 27–31 – The Southland Firestorm, formed of more than fourteen separate fires in Southern California burning simultaneously, burns more than 700 homes and 160,000 acres. Two of these fire are the Laguna Fire which burned more than 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares), destroyed hundreds of homes and caused $528 million in damage in Orange County, California, and the Kinneloa Fire in Los Angeles County, California which caused a fatality.source
• 1993November 20 – An Avioimpex Yakovlev Yak-42D crashes into Mount Trojani near Ohrid, North Macedonia. All 8 crew members and 115 of the 116 passengers are killed.source
• 1993December 11 – One of the three blocks of the Highland Towers near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia collapses, killing 48.source
• 1994March 23 – Green Ramp disaster: two military aircraft collide over Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, United States, causing 24 fatalities.source
• 1994April 26 – China Airlines Flight 140, an Airbus A300, crashes while landing at Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people.source
• 1994May 1 – Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy.source
• 1994September 8 – USAir Flight 427, a Boeing 737 with 132 people on board, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport killing all on board.source
• 1994September 28 – The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.source
• 1994November 27 – A Fuxin Yiyuan dance hall catches fire in Liaoning Province, China, killing 233 persons, with another 71 rescued, according to a confirmed Chinese government official report.source
• 1995March 20 – Members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo carry out the Tokyo subway sarin attack, killing 14 people and leading to over a thousand injured.source
• 1995March 31 – TAROM Flight 371 from Bucharest to Brussels crashes shortly after takeoff killing all 60 people on board.source
• 1995April 19 – Oklahoma City bombing: 168 people, including eight federal Marshals and 19 children, are killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and 680 are wounded by a bomb set off by Timothy McVeigh.source
• 1995May 10 – The Vaal Reefs mining disaster at Vaal Reefs gold mine in Orkney, South Africa. A runaway locomotive falls into a lift shaft onto an ascending cage and causes it to plunge 1500 ft to the bottom of the 6900 ft deep shaft, killing 104.source
• 1995June 29 – Sampoong Department Store collapse in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, kills 502 and injures 937.source
• 1995July 11 – A Cubana de Aviación Antonov An-24 crashes into the Caribbean off southeast Cuba killing 44 people.source
• 1995August 14 – Nepali Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikari along with seven other high-ranking officials survives a helicopter crash.source
• 1995October 9 – 1995 Palo Verde, Arizona, derailment An Amtrak Sunset Limited train derails through sabotage at a trestle near Palo Verde, Arizona, United States, resulting in one death.source
• 1995October 28 – A fire in Baku Metro, Azerbaijan, kills 289 passengers, becoming the world's worst subway disaster.source
• 1995December 20 – American Airlines Flight 965 (Boeing 757) crashes into a mountain near Buga, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, killing 160 of the 164 on board.source
• 1995December 23 – Dabwali fire accident: The Rajiv Marriage Palace catches fire in Haryana, India, killing 442 persons.source
• 1995Sudden oak death, the tree disease caused by the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, is first observed, in California, United States.source
• 1996February 6 – Birgenair Flight 301, on a charter flight from the Caribbean to Germany, crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Dominican Republic, killing all 189 passengers and crew.source
• 1996February 29 – Faucett Perú Flight 251 en route from Lima to Rodriguez Ballon airport crashes into a mountain near Arequipa; all 123 people on board are killed.source
• 1996February 29 – At least 81 people drown when a boat capsizes 120 kilometres east of Kampala, Uganda.source
• 1996March 6 – A boat carrying market traders capsizes outside Freetown harbour in Sierra Leone, killing at least 86 people.source
• 1996March 18 – The Ozone Disco Club fire in Quezon City, Philippines, kills 163 people.source
• 1996March 24 – The Marcopper mining disaster on the island of Marinduque, Philippines takes place.source
• 1996April 3 – A Boeing 737 military jet crashes into a mountain north of Dubrovnik, Croatia. All 35 people on board are killed, including United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.source
• 1996April 28 – Bhai Pheru bus bombing: A bomb explodes in Bhai Pheru, Punjab, Pakistan, killing more than 60 people.source
• 1996May 10 – 1996 Everest disaster: A sudden storm engulfs Mount Everest with several climbing teams high on the mountain, leaving eight people dead. By the end of the month, at least four other climbers die in the worst season of fatalities on the mountain to date.source
• 1996May 11 – After takeoff from Miami, a fire started by improperly handled oxygen canisters in the cargo hold of Atlanta-bound ValuJet Flight 592 causes the Douglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.source
• 1996May 21 – The MV Bukoba sinks in Tanzanian waters in Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000 people in one of Africa's worst maritime disasters.source
• 1996June 11 – A peace convoy carrying Chechen separatist leaders and international diplomats is targeted by a series of remotely controlled land mines; eight people are killed.source
• 1996June 15 – In Manchester, UK, an IRA bomb injures over 200 people and devastates a large part of the city centre.source
• 1996June 29 – An explosion in a firecrackers factory in Sichuan Province, China kills at least 52 people and injures 83 others.source
• 1996July 17 – Paris- and Rome-bound TWA Flight 800 (Boeing 747) explodes off the coast of Long Island, New York, killing all 230 people on board.source
• 1996August 14 – A rocket ignited during a fireworks display in Arequipa, Peru knocks down a high-tension power cable into a dense crowd, electrocuting 35 people.source
• 1996August 29 – A Russian Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner crashes into a mountain as it approaches the airport at Spitsbergen, Norway, killing all 141 people on board.source
• 1996October 2 – Aeroperú Flight 603 crashes into the Pacific Ocean when the instruments fail just after takeoff from Lima Airport, killing all 70 people on board.source
• 1996November 8 – All 144 people on board a Nigerian-owned Boeing 727 die after the aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean while approaching Lagos airport.source
• 1996November 12 – Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 collides in mid-air with Kazakhstan Airlines Il-76 in New Delhi, India, resulting in the loss of 349 lives.source
• 1996November 20 – The 1996 Garley Building fire occurred in Hong Kong, resulting in 41 deaths and 81 injuries.source
• 1996November 21 – A propane explosion at the Humberto Vidal shoe store and office building in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 33 people.source
• 1996November 23 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.source
• 1996December 30 – In the Indian state of Assam, a passenger train is bombed by Bodo separatists, killing 26.source
• 1997February 4 – On their way to Lebanon, two Israeli troop-transport helicopters collide, killing all 73 on board.source
• 1997March 18 – The tail of a Russian An-24 charter plane breaks off while en route to Turkey, causing the plane to crash, killing all 50 on board, and resulting in the grounding of all An-24s.source
• 1997March 24–26 – In San Diego, 39 Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide at their compound.source
• 1997April 14 – Fire breaks out in a pilgrim camp on the Plain of Mena, 11 km mi from Mecca; 343 die.source
• 1997April 29 – Two trains crash at Hunan, China; 126 are killed.source
• 1997July 11 – Royal Jomtien Resort Hotel fire at Pattaya, Thailand's worst hotel fire, kills 90.source
• 1997September 21 – St. Olaf's Church, a stone church from the 16th century in Tyrvää, Finland, is burnt down.source
• 1997September 26 – Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 crashes while on approach to Medan, North Sumatra, during the 1997 Southeast Asian haze, killing all 234 people on board. This becomes the deadliest aviation accident in Indonesian history.source
• 1997October 10 – Uruguay's worst air disaster occurs when Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 2553 crashes near Nuevo Berlín, killing all 74 on board.source
• 1997December 19 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.source
• 1998February 2 - Cebu Pacific Flight 387 crashes into a mountain, this crash marked deadliest aviation accident in Philippines until 2000.source
• 1998February 4 – Western Pacific, a low-cost airline with headquarters at Colorado Springs Airport, ceases operations.source
• 1998February 16 – China Airlines Flight 676 crashes upon attempted landing at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, killing 203, the second-deadliest air crash in Taiwan.source
• 1998June 3 – Eschede train disaster: an Intercity-Express high-speed train derails between Hanover and Hamburg, Germany, causing 101 deaths.source
• 1998June 8 - The DeBruce Grain Elevator explosion in Wichita, Kansas kills 7.source
• 1998September 2 – A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 airliner (Swissair Flight 111) crashes near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, after taking off from New York City en route to Geneva; all 229 people on board are killed.source
• 1998September 10 – At midnight, a shooting occurs aboard an Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine of the Russian Navy docked in the northern Russian port city of Severomorsk.source
• 1998December 11 – Thai Airways International Flight 261 crashes upon attempted landing at Surat Thani International Airport, killing 101, the second-deadliest air crash in Thailand.source
• 1999March 1 – One of four bombs detonated in Lusaka, Zambia, which destroys the Angolan Embassy.source
• 1999April 5 – Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 are handed over to Scottish authorities for eventual trial in the Netherlands. The United Nations suspends sanctions against Libya.source
• 1999May 9 – Mother's Day bus crash: a charter bus veers off the roadway before colliding with a dirk embankment in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, killing 22 passengers and injuring another 22.source
• 1999June 1 – American Airlines Flight 1420 crash lands after overrunning the runway at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 of the 145 people on board.source
• 1999June 30 – Twenty-three people die in a fire at the Sealand Youth Training Center in South Korea.source
• 1999July 14 – the Big Blue crane collapse happened during the construction of Miller Park, killing three iron workers.source
• 1999July 27 – Twenty-one people die in a canyoning disaster at the Saxetenbach Gorge near Interlaken, Switzerland.source
• 1999July 31 – NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surface.source
• 1999September 3 – The 1999 Ontario Highway 401 crash occurs, involving 87 vehicles and killing 8.source
• 1999October 5 – Thirty-one people die in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash, west of London, England.source
• 1999October 30 – 1999 Incheon bar fire: A bar catches fire in Incheon, South Korea, killing 56 people.source
• 1999October 31 – EgyptAir Flight 990, travelling from New York City to Cairo, crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts killing all 217 on board.source
• 1999The Croatian cargo ship Borak, sailing from Koromačno to Solin and transporting cement, sank near Sestrica Vela after its cargo shifted because of bad weather. Two crew members (Valter Cimera and Stjepan Španić) lost their lives, while the other three (Ante Jureško, owner and captain of the ship, his son Slavko, as well as Muhamed Čeliković) were rescued by Damir Badžim (from Šibenik) and Slaviša Malešević (refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina).source
• 1999December 24 – Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked on 24 December 1999 by five members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in what was considered to be India's worst and last plane hijackingsource