Disaster Area

NOTE: This was released in May of 2025, but due to life being what it is, I didn't get to finish the final two parts of the episode. So I am rereleasing this episode this week, and the next two weeks I will release the following two episodes. I have now officially backed myself in a corner and I simply MUST finish the episodes now. 
It would start with a headache, a fever, maybe a funny tummy. But soon enough your knee would give out, or your arm would hang limp, or you would struggle to breathe. You'd be taken to the hospital, where you'd get your diagnosis - polio. If you survived, you ran the risk of doing so with paralyzed limbs, struggling to walk on bulky leg braces. Your parents would be terrified they might lose you, and so everybody wanted the one thing that could stop all of this - a vaccine.
Videos:
New England Journal of Medicine: The Cutter Incident, 50 Years Later

American Experience: The Polio Crusade

The Iron Lung and Polio by M.Rockoff | OPENPediatrics

Articles and books:
Polio: An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky

The Cutter Incident, by Dr. Paul Offit

NEJM: The Cutter Incident

2001 was not the only year in which something tragic occurred on September 11th. On that day in 1974, eighty-two people would board a plane from Charleston, South Carolina, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Only ten would survive.

Videos:

9/11/74: The Untold Story of Charlotte's Deadliest Plane Crash
Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper's beautiful conversation about grief
Talkative Pilots: Eastern Airlines Flight 212

Articles and books:

A fiery plane crash on 9/11/74 changed Charleston forever. 50 years later, its scars linger.
NTSB Crash Report for Eastern Airlines Flight 212
Charlotte's deadliest plane crash has finally been memorialized after 51 years

King Henry I of England had grand plans for the future of his sole legitimate male heir, William Aetheling. None of those plans would come to pass.

Articles and books:

The Sinking Of The White Ship 1120
The White Ship, by Charles Spencer
The Impact of the White Ship Disaster of 1120
900 years since the White Ship disaster
How one catastrophic shipwreck sank a medieval dynasty
Divers find The Tragic White Ship

On a cold April night in 1865, the calm across the waters of the Mississippi River was shattered by a sudden explosion - one which destroyed a steamboat and most of the Confederate POWs crowded on its decks.

Videos:

Remember the Sultana
The History Channel: The Sultana
Part-Time Explorer: America's Worst Shipwreck

Articles and books:

Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, by Alan Huffman
Knoxville, TN: S.S. Sultana Memorial
Appomattox Court House: The Surrender Meeting
American Battlefield Trust: The Sultana Disaster
The Sultana Disaster Museum
Toledo Blade: The Sinking of the Sultana

On a cold April night in 1865, the calm across the waters of the Mississippi River was shattered by a sudden explosion - one which destroyed a steamboat and most of the Confederate POWs crowded on its decks.

Videos:

Remember the Sultana
The History Channel: The Sultana
Part-Time Explorer: America's Worst Shipwreck

Articles and books:

Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, by Alan Huffman
Knoxville, TN: S.S. Sultana Memorial
Appomattox Court House: The Surrender Meeting
American Battlefield Trust: The Sultana Disaster
The Sultana Disaster Museum
Toledo Blade: The Sinking of the Sultana