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transport disasters - events| 8 May 1842 | France | The Paris–Versailles train jumps the track and catches fire trapping passengers inside the wooden carriages; 100 people die. It is the world's first serious train accident. | | 1852 | UK | The British troopship HMS Birkenhead sinks after hitting a rock off the southern African coast, killing 445 men. | | December 1872 | USA | The US ship the Mary Celeste is found adrift without crew in the Atlantic Ocean, undamaged and with its cargo intact. | | 3 September 1878 | UK | Over 600 people are killed in England when the pleasure steamer Princess Alice sinks in the Thames. | | 12 February 1907 | USA | The passenger steamer Larchmont sinks in the Long Island Sound off New York City, killing 131 people. | | 6 May 1937 | USA | The giant German airship Hindenburg explodes in the USA as it attempts to moor at Lakehurst Naval Station, New Jersey; 36 people are killed. | | 16 December 1960 | USA | The worst airline disaster to date occurs when a United Air Lines and a TWA plane collide in fog over New York City killing 132 passengers and crew members. | | 18 March 1967 | UK | The Liberian-registered 120,000 tonne tanker Torrey Canyon strikes a submerged reef runs aground on the Seven Stones Isles of Scilly, off the southwest coast of Britain, and spills 860,000 barrels (around 119,000 tonnes) of crude oil into the sea. It is the biggest oil spill to date. | | 6 April 1994 | Rwanda, Burundi | The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, are killed in an air crash; interethnic violence erupts on a huge scale. | | 25 July 2000 | France | An Air France Concorde jet, chartered to a German tour company, crashes soon after take-off from Paris, France, killing all 109 passengers and crew, and four people on the ground. | | 12 November 2001 | USA | The US city of New York suffers further tragedy in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 11 September as an American Airlines passenger aircraft crashes into the residential neighbourhood of Queens, killing about 265 people. | | 1 July 2002 | Germany Switzerland | A Boeing 757 freight airliner and a Tupolev 154 passenger jet carrying mainly children from Russia to Spain collide in midair over Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border killing over 70 people. The conduct of Swiss air traffic controllers comes under investigation. |
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