A Brief History
On August 1, 2004, about 400 people died and another nearly 500 were injured when a supermarket in Asunción, Paraguay, caught fire. Managers had fire exits blocked to prevent theft, which resulted in the mass casualties.
Digging Deeper
Something as mundane as grocery shopping can be deadly, and here are some ways incidents prove the point:
In 1967, an F-4 fighter jet crashed into an Arizona grocery, with 15 feared dead and 12 injured.
In 2013, a store in Riga, Latvia, suffered a roof collapse, burying people under tons of debris, leaving 54 dead and 41 injured.
Collapsing shelves often injure or kill someone in a grocery, including in 2020, when a Brazilian tragedy killed 1 and injured 8 more.
In 2022, in Buffalo, New York tragedy struck when an 18 year old man opened fire, killing 10 and wounding 3 others.
Note: As always with catastrophic incidents, casualty figures vary with the source
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is the biggest danger in grocery shopping?
If you liked this article and would like to receive notifications of new articles, please feel welcome to follow History and Headlines on Facebook and X!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Hamilton, Shane. Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race. Yale University Press, 2018.
Pegler, Martin. Designing the World’s Best Supermarkets. Visual Reference Publications, 2002.
