On February 1, 2003, mission control called up to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia to discuss abnormal heat and tire pressure readings from the left wing. Commander Rick Husband replied, “Roger. ” Then the signal died completely. Columbia vanished from both radio and radar.
Streaks of white smoke filled the sky over Texas. The shuttle had disintegrated at 18 times the speed of sound, killing all seven astronauts aboard. It was supposed to be a routine return. Columbia, the first shuttle ever to fly, was finishing its 28th mission, a 16-day scientific research trip that had completed roughly 80 experiments.
The crew—Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon—had done their work well. Now they were just coming home. The cause of the disaster was almost absurdly small. A little more than a minute after launch, a piece of insulating foam had broken free from the bipod ramp that fastened the external fuel tank to the shuttle.
The foam struck Columbia’s left wing at about 545 mph, damaging the carbon heat shield panels attached to it. In space, the damage meant nothing. The crew felt no ill effects. But once Columbia hit Earth’s atmosphere on re-entry, the wing was no longer protected from temperatures that could reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The wing broke off. The rest of the shuttle broke up, burned, and scattered across the sky. The world didn’t learn about the damaged heat shield until after the disaster, but mission control knew almost immediately. The ground team saw foam break loose at launch.
A minority opinion held that catastrophe was possible. But leadership chose not to investigate further. Wayne Hale, former shuttle project manager, later revealed what John Harpold, director of mission operations, told him. Harpold said, “There’s nothing we can do about damage to the thermal protective system.
If it has been damaged, it’s probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. ”
Harpold believed it was better for the astronauts to have a happy, successful flight and die unexpectedly during re-entry than to learn their fate in orbit and slowly run out of air with nothing to be done. The most tragic part came later.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined that the shuttle Atlantis could have staged a rescue mission. It would have been high risk, and it would have required identifying the damage early and launching immediately. We’ll never know if it would have worked. What we do know is that the path taken cost seven lives and eventually cost NASA the entire shuttle program.
Foam shedding was not new. It had happened several times before, so often that engineers dismissed it as routine. One NASA engineering manager, Don L. McCormick Jr.
, raised concerns to mission management team member Linda Ham. She told him it was no issue for this mission. The debris field stretched from central Texas to western Louisiana. More than 25,000 professionals and volunteers searched 2.
3 million acres. Even so, as of 2017, only about 84,000 pieces—40% of Columbia—had been recovered. The accident came just a year and a half after 9/11. Terrorism was fresh in everyone’s minds, and investigators couldn’t rule it out right away.
FBI special agent Michael Hillman said many involved in the search had also worked the 9/11 debris sites. The bureau worked closely with NASA and turned over all evidence once terrorism was confirmed not to be the cause. After the Challenger disaster in 1986, NASA had vowed to do better. They couldn’t keep the promise.
Budget cuts in the ’90s left the agency stretched thin. By the Bush administration, NASA was on a shoestring budget but still expected to produce missions for the International Space Station. There was no time to iron out the kinks. Former NASA California director Henry McDonald summed up the mentality: “We flew it, we had a problem, we landed, so what’s the big deal?
So there was a crack in the wing panel, but hey, we got away with it. Went to the next mission. ”
Heads rolled after the accident. Higher-ups were let go.
Wayne Hale was put in charge of the remaining shuttle missions, and he was the only member of NASA to publicly apologize and accept blame for the normalization of the abnormal. He said, “After the accident, when we were reconstituting the mission management team, my words to them were, we are never ever going to say that there is nothing we can do. ”
Hale changed the dismissive culture. He told his team, “The first thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to put the arrogance aside.
” Safety regulations were updated, concerns were taken seriously, and the remaining shuttle flights were successful before the fleet retired in 2011. But the fleet was aging. Columbia had been the first to fly in 1981, and the technology was outdated. The investigating panel concluded the remaining shuttles should be replaced as soon as possible.
They were sent to museums in New York, California, Florida, and Virginia. With the shuttle program over, NASA turned to private industry. Elon Musk and SpaceX stepped in. Musk questioned why space technology hadn’t advanced like every other sector.
He pointed out that an early ’70s computer filled a room and had less power than a cell phone. NASA and its contractors had too little money, too little time, and too much to do. Musk and his investors, without the bureaucratic red tape, could find the cheapest, safest way forward. On July 25, 2000, another tragedy struck the world of aviation.
Air France Flight 4590 left Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris bound for JFK. The Concorde, the fastest commercial plane ever made, never made it. The Concorde had been a marvel. A joint project between France and Britain, it first flew in 1969 and went commercial in 1976.
With a top speed of 1,354 mph—twice the speed of sound—it could cross the Atlantic in about three hours. Tickets were expensive, sometimes as high as $8,000 to $11,000, and the plane catered to the ultra-rich and famous. Celebrities like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Barbra Streisand, and Richard Gere were regulars. Passengers drank champagne and ate caviar at 1,500 mph.
Former British Airways employee Brian Lovegrove described the flight as loud, like being in a dentist’s chair as it climbed to 60,000 feet. But he also loved it. “You could never have enough of seeing it,” he said. “It was a delight to watch and hear.
”
The disaster began on the runway. Debris from another aircraft that had taken off moments before littered the tarmac. The Concorde ran over a titanium alloy strip, rupturing a tire. Tire debris flew up and damaged the left wing.
The shockwave ruptured the number five fuel tank. A plume of flame appeared at engine two. The plane was already going too fast to abort takeoff. It was only in the air for a few seconds.
The burning left wing started to disintegrate. The right wing banked the plane over 100 degrees. The crew lost control, and the plane crashed into a hotel and restaurant. Everyone on board—100 passengers and nine crew—died.
Four people on the ground were killed as well. Years later, an investigation revealed that the aircraft had undergone a routine repair just four days before the crash. The plane was seasoned, with almost 12,000 flight hours and 4,900 takeoffs and landings. The crash didn’t end the Concorde line immediately.
All 13 remaining planes underwent inspection, and investigators found significant design issues. Airlines would need to spend large amounts of money to modify the planes. Add in fuel prices, and it spelled doom. In 2010, a French court found Continental Airlines guilty of involuntary manslaughter, holding them accountable for all 114 deaths.
But the crash wasn’t the true catalyst for the Concorde’s fall. According to Professor Chris Ivory, it was 9/11. “It wasn’t really the 2000 crash that ended Concorde,” he told The Atlantic in 2015. “It was a nice time to bring it to an unembarrassing close.
”
The September 11 attacks changed aviation forever. Passenger numbers dropped sharply. On April 10, 2003, British Airways and Air France retired the supersonic jet nearly three decades after its first launch. The 2000 crash was the only fatal incident, but it wasn’t the only time something went wrong.
In 1989, the skin covering the rudder peeled off due to moisture problems. Passengers on a flight from New Zealand to Australia heard multiple thudding sounds. In 1992, a flight from London to New York suffered similar thuds and vibrations—same problem, same loose quality standards. The idea behind the Concorde was great, but it wasn’t profitable.
The plane was a major gas guzzler. It burned through 89,000 liters of fuel for 100 passengers on a typical trip. A Boeing 747 used only 59,000 liters for four times as many passengers going to the same place. The 1977 oil crisis only made things worse.
There were other concerns too. In 1976, the Metro Suburban Aircraft Noise Association protested that the Concorde’s takeoff noise was four times louder than a Boeing 747. The sonic boom caused environmental damage and skin cancer concerns. The association sent over 8,000 letters to New York’s governor, promising to get disruptive if necessary.
“If we fought the British 200 years ago, we can do it again,” they said. Only two US airports ever allowed the Concorde to land: Washington Dulles and JFK. When the Concorde ceased operations in 2003, it left behind pride and technological achievement. People were excited when it came to town.
Pilots demonstrated their pride by waving flags from cockpit windows. Fan groups still exist today. The Facebook group Save Concorde has over 3,600 members who want to return the plane to flight in a heritage capacity. “We firmly believe that the great British public and the wider world deserve to have the opportunity to see Concorde flying,” they wrote.
“And to this day, there are no technological reasons whatsoever why this ambitious aim cannot be achieved. ”
While the Concorde may not return soon, the future of supersonic flight is being built. Boom Supersonic is working on the Overture, with plans to build in 2022, roll out in 2025, and carry passengers by 2029. They’ve partnered with United Airlines, Rolls-Royce, and Japan Airlines.
Some believe Mount Everest is a pristine landscape, but the grim truth is that the mountain is littered with corpses. Once a climber’s body freezes, it attaches to the hillside permanently. And one such body became a famous landmark thanks to its eye-catching footwear. His name was Green Boots.
Rising over 29,000 feet above sea level on the border between China and Nepal, Mount Everest was first successfully climbed by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Since then, the world’s tallest mountain has been a destination for climbers testing their skill and luck. In the past century, around 330 climbers have died on its slopes, succumbing to hypothermia, exhaustion, lack of oxygen, falls, and avalanches. As one BBC reporter said, “When Everest takes a life, it also keeps it.
”
Green Boots was one of Everest’s most famous residents. Before he was moved in 2014, he rested in a nook on the north side of the mountain where most hikers had to pass. Climbers used his body as a landmark, knowing that when they saw him, they were at 8,500 meters, close to the summit. His identity has never been confirmed, but the consensus is that he was Tsewang Paljor, a 28-year-old Head Constable in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, part of the first Indian ascent of Everest from its north side.
Paljor grew up in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, around the mountains. He dropped out of school after the 10th grade to help support his family and joined the ITBP. On May 10, 1996, a massive blizzard hit the mountain, killing eight climbers, including Paljor. It was the highest known single-day death toll in Everest’s history.
Even experienced guides perished trying to save groups of climbers. Survivors wrote books about the ordeal, and Baltasar Kormákur directed a 2015 film dramatization called Everest. Before Green Boots was removed, about 80% of climbers approaching from the north side would rest in Green Boots Cave, a small alcove that provided shelter from the wind. It was a popular spot to catch your breath or have a snack.
But it must have been hard to ignore the dead body sharing the cave, especially when his legs extended into the path, forcing climbers to step over him. Many climbers found it disturbing. Some considered it disrespectful. The man didn’t plan on spending eternity as a signpost.
But his presence was unmissable, and his lime green boots made him a grimly useful trail marker. In May 2006, 34-year-old British mountaineer David Sharp passed away in the same cave. Trekking alone, he was attempting to reach the summit without oxygen tanks, a feat considered dangerous even for experienced Sherpas. He succumbed to hypothermia in an area known as the death zone, where the air is too thin to support human life.
Disputed reports say as many as 40 other trekkers passed him by, either believing he was Green Boots or another hiker who had already died. By the time people realized Sharp needed help, it was too late. At his family’s request, his body was moved a year later. Moving bodies from Everest is no easy task.
Frozen corpses stick to their locations and become much heavier. Recovering one takes six to eight Sherpas, and they don’t work cheap. One mountaineer who inquired about removing Green Boots was quoted around $70,000. It’s hazard pay, because any recovery attempt is dangerous.
The Sherpas putting their own lives at risk know that if they die up there, no one will be paying six to eight more Sherpas to get their bodies down. Given the expense and difficulty, many families opt for respectful concealment instead. Nobody knows exactly how many bodies remain on Everest, but the estimate is around 280. That statistic doesn’t seem to deter climbers—about 800 people attempt the climb every year.
In 2014, climbers reported that Green Boots was missing. Many of the bodies once visible on the north side vanished, including an area known as the Rainbow Ridge, named for the colors of the clothes on exposed corpses. Experts suspect the Chinese Tibetan Mountaineering Association and the Chinese Mountaineering Association undertook the cleanup, but neither has admitted to it, likely to avoid bad publicity. In 2017, there were reports of Green Boots sightings, but they were dismissed.
Other reports maintained that his body was covered out of respect and remains that way to this day. The Twilight Zone was one of the most enduring shows in American television. It ran from 1959 to 1964, the creative brainchild of Rod Serling, and featured early appearances by future stars like Dennis Hopper, William Shatner, and Robert Redford. It earned a place in the hearts of Americans from all walks of life.
In the 1980s, Hollywood decided to bring it back. Steven Spielberg was hired to reboot it, and he decided to elevate it to the big screen, enlisting fellow filmmakers John Landis, Joe Dante, and George Miller. The movie would remake three episodes from the original series and include one new story. Landis was tasked with directing “Time Out,” based on the classic episode “A Quality of Mercy.
” Veteran actor Vic Morrow played Bill Connor, a deeply bigoted man who is mysteriously sent back in time, finding himself as a Jew during World War II, then a Black man dealing with the Klan, and finally a Vietnamese man during the Vietnam War, protecting two small children from American troops. Originally, Connor stayed remorseless, but after studio concern, Landis added a scene where Connor saves the two children, giving the character more dimension. He utters the words, “I swear to God, I’ll protect you. ” It would prove to be ironic foreboding.
As pre-production ramped up, Landis and his team had a problem. They needed to shoot complex, time-intensive sequences with children, but the Screen Actors Guild had strict conditions and curfews. Someone suggested hiring two non-union children and paying them as extras. Landis agreed.
The children’s parents were not informed of the helicopter or its potential dangers. On the night in question, the crew completed a shot around 10:30 p. m. The children were sent back to their parents.
Then around 2:30 in the morning, a shot with a massive explosion was captured. Helicopter pilot Dorsey Wingo, a Vietnam War vet, deemed it highly unsafe. The rain machines were making it difficult to fly. Wingo and his co-pilot discussed how to inform the director, but before they could speak up, Landis approached them with a bullhorn, yelling, “I need you to fly lower.
I need you to get closer. ”
They were shooting a sequence where Morrow fled across a shallow river, carrying the two child actors, pursued by American GIs. The helicopter was hovering about 25 feet off the ground. The plan was for it to fly over the actors, land, and Morrow and the children would flee into it.
As action was called, Wingo turned the helicopter 180 degrees to prepare for landing. An ill-timed mortar was fired, colliding with the tail section and detaching it. The chopper spun out of control and careened toward the ground. At that exact moment, Morrow had accidentally dropped one of the children into the water.
He tried to scoop her up but wasn’t fast enough. The actors were killed instantly. The helicopter blades decapitated Morrow and the child actor Myca Dinh Le, and the other child actor, Renee Shin-Yi Chen, was crushed by the machine. The set was closed immediately.
The parents were rushed to a hospital, crying and screaming, diagnosed as being in shock. The public and media scrutinized what happened. Landis and the production’s skirting of labor laws and his fateful quote, “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” reverberated for months. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated.
The Federal Aviation Administration had just instituted regulations defining how aircraft were to be used in film and TV productions, but they only covered fixed-wing aircraft, not helicopters. The NTSB recommended an amendment, which was accepted in 1986, but it was too little, too late. The tragedy led to both civil and criminal suits against the filmmakers. In 1986, a state trial took place.
Landis and his associates were charged with three counts of gross negligence and three counts of manslaughter. An initial trial was dismissed for lack of evidence, but an appeals court proceeded to a full jury trial. Jurors were under intense observation. At one point, they were taken to the crash location and watched a reenactment.
Landis was stoic and quiet. Asked if he’d viewed the footage before the trial, he said, “Only twice before. It’s very hard for me to watch. ”
Myca Lee’s father testified that he heard Landis instruct the helicopter pilot to fly lower.
All four parents testified they were never informed about explosives or helicopters, and were repeatedly told no one was in danger. The defense alleged the parents were liars, making up stories. Production assistant Donna Shoeman testified she thought the creatives knew what they were doing, and that she heard George Folsey say, “They’d put him in jail for having children this close to explosives. ”
The trial raged for nine months, from 1986 to 1987.
Every day, both sides called each other liars in front of media cameras. Ultimately, the defendants were acquitted. The prosecutor later said one key factor was that the jury had been told an untruth: that John Landis was going to make a film about the trial and cast the jurors to play themselves. They had to acquit him to see the movie made.
It wasn’t true, but the jury purportedly believed it. Anything Landis scribbled on a legal pad, they took as a scene for this mythic film. Morrow’s family settled out of court within a year. The children’s families collected millions in civil lawsuits, which did nothing to ease the pain of losing a child.
Landis spoke about the incident in 1996: “There was absolutely no good aspect about this whole story. The tragedy, which I think about every day, had an enormous impact on my career, from which it may possibly never recover. ” His behavior during the trial reportedly killed his friendship with Spielberg. Spielberg said, “No movie is worth dying for.
I think people are standing up much more now than ever before to producers and directors who ask for too much. If something isn’t safe, it’s the right and responsibility of every actor or crew member to yell cut. ”
When the movie was finally released, none of the footage of Morrow and the children crossing the river was included. Extreme stage magic has more in common with daredevil stunts than careful illusions.
Some practitioners have paid the ultimate price. Royden Joseph Gilbert Raison de la Genesta, performing as Gilbert Genesta, tried to follow in Houdini’s footsteps with the milk can escape. He would be locked inside a large milk can filled with water, relying on a hidden mechanism to escape. In 1930, during a performance in Frankfort, Kentucky, the can was damaged in transport, rendering the mechanism inoperable.
Genesta drowned in front of an oblivious audience. Charles Rowan, known as Carl the Magician, made his act about adrenaline. His signature stunt involved escaping from a straitjacket with a speeding car bearing down on him. In 1930, during a performance in South Africa, his timing was off.
The car struck him at 45 mph before he could free himself. He perished in front of a horrified audience. The bullet catch is one of the deadliest illusions in magic. In 1820, Madame Delinsky, performing in Poland, enlisted six soldiers to participate.
Each was instructed to load a blank cartridge, but one soldier loaded a live round. Delinsky, who was pregnant, was fatally shot on stage. Sigmund Neuberger, known as the Great Lafayette, was a showman of unparalleled opulence. In 1911, during an Edinburgh performance of “The Lion’s Bride,” a stage lantern ignited a fire.
The cast and crew were trapped by Lafayette’s strict backstage security—only one exit was unlocked, a precaution meant to protect his secrets. Lafayette fled briefly but returned to save his beloved horse. Both died. In a final twist, the remains of a body double were found beneath the stage.
Dr. Vivian Hensley, an Australian dentist with a passion for amateur magic, learned the dangers of illusion in 1938. Performing a razor blade swallow for his wife and son, he actually swallowed the blade instead of stashing it up his sleeve. Rushed to a doctor, he was fed cotton wool in an attempt to cushion the blade, but surgeons couldn’t locate it.
Days later, he succumbed to his injuries. Joseph W. Burrus, performing as The Amazing Joe, attempted a buried alive trick on Halloween night in 1990. He encased himself in a transparent coffin beneath 7 tons of dirt and wet cement.
The weight proved too much; the coffin collapsed and crushed him to death. He died on the 64th anniversary of Houdini’s death. Chung Ling Soo was a famous Chinese magician, except he wasn’t. His real name was William Ellsworth Robinson, a white American who borrowed the persona, wearing piles of makeup and maintaining the illusion offstage with an interpreter.
In 1918, while performing the bullet catch, failure to clean residual gunpowder from the firearm caused it to fire an actual bullet. Breaking character for the first and final time, he said his last words in English: “Oh my god, something’s happened. Lower the curtain. ” The curtain lowered on Chung Ling Soo for good.
Jeff Rayburn Hopper, a magician in Winona Lake, Indiana, died in 1984 while rehearsing an underwater escape. He successfully slipped the chains, but high winds and turbulent water made rescue impossible. He drowned at 23. Johan Maurer, known as Bala Brega, toured Brazil in 1900 with a pyrotechnic act.
The region lacked the gas supply his act required, so he turned to acetylene gas bags, a volatile alternative. While setting up for transport, one of the bags exploded, killing the magician and his assistant instantly. His manager was severely injured. In 1840, Arnold Buck took his final blow during a bullet catch at London’s Queen’s Theatre.
A volunteer was invited on stage to handle the firearm. When instructed to reload with a harmless bullet, the volunteer inserted nails into the barrel instead. Buck was fatally struck by the improvised shrapnel.
His assistant revealed the original fake bullet, proving the trick had been sabotaged.
