A Brief History
On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza, an eight story multi-use commercial building in Bangladesh, collapsed and killed over 1,100 of the people inside, as well as injuring another 2,500. Apparently, the top four floors were added without proper support, leading to heavy garment equipment causing the collapse.
Digging Deeper
Sadly, many times buildings have collapsed with tragic consequences, and here we list two of the worst tragedies.
In 27, AD a wooden amphitheater in Fidenae on the outskirts of Rome collapsed during a gladiatorial contest, killing a reported 20,000 spectators, although that number may be a high estimate. About 50,000 people were in attendance. Insufficient structural strength is believed to be the cause of the disaster.
In 2001, the World Trade Center high rise complex in New York City was struck by hijacked jetliners, bringing down the two main buildings and costing around 2,800 lives.
Question for students (and subscribers): Have you ever seen a building collapse? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Mayell, Mark. Building Collapses. Lucent, 2004.
Uddin, Jamal. Media Hypes and Disaster Management: The Case of Rana Plaza, Bangladesh. LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2021.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Sudipta06 of the crowd around the collapsed building at Savar, Bangladesh, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
