Empire State Building Plane Crash
On July 28, 1945, a plane headed for LaGuardia Airport got lost in the dense morning fog of New York City. Air traffic control instructed the plane to land in Newark instead. The low-flying plane narrowly avoided the Chrysler builder—instead, it crashed into the Empire State Building, killing 11 people.
The Gates of Hell
In 1971, while searching for an oil field site in Turkmenistan, Soviet engineers came across a natural gas field. Concerned about the release of poisonous gases into nearby villages, the engineers decided to burn off the gas. They expected the process to take no longer than a few weeks, but the gas has continued to burn for over four decades with no end in sight.