It’s hard to imagine now, says The Retrospectors podcast, but at the turn of the 20th century one of America’s favourite pastimes was watching staged train crashes. The collisions attracted tens of thousands of spectators. At one infamous event in 1896, in Texas, the boilers on both trains exploded, “sending thousands of pieces of red-hot metal hurtling through the air”. Two spectators were killed and many others maimed; a Civil War veteran present said it was “more terrifying than the Battle of Gettysburg”. The organiser, William George Crush, was immediately sacked by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad – but the deadly event generated so much media coverage he was rehired “the very next day”.
It’s hard to imagine now, says The Retrospectors podcast, but at the turn of the 20th century one of America’s favourite pastimes was watching staged train crashes. The collisions attracted tens of thousands of spectators. At one infamous event in 1896, in Texas, the boilers on both trains exploded, “sending thousands of pieces of red-hot metal hurtling through the air”. Two spectators were killed and many others maimed; a Civil War veteran present said it was “more terrifying than the Battle of Gettysburg”. The organiser, William George Crush, was immediately sacked by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad – but the deadly event generated so much media coverage he was rehired “the very next day”.
There’s that segment of America that loves crashing, burning, and blowing stuff up. The spirit of staged train crashes lives on in demolition derbies often held on a night at country fairs…
