The Hartford Center Collapse

On the evening of 18 January 1978, nearly 5,000 spectators watched a basketball game in the three-year-old Hartford Center. It was the jewel of an urban renewal program in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, and boasted the largest single span of roof ever lifted into place as a complete unit. The roof was an engineering marvel ...

By |2023-02-22T09:14:57-06:00October 28th, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|18 Comments

The Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill

In 2008, the energy company BP received a permit to drill a subsurface oil well in the Gulf of Mexico called the Macondo well. For this project, BP chartered the 10-year-old rig Deepwater Horizon from its owner, Transocean. Halliburton was responsible for cementing work ...

By |2023-02-22T09:15:02-06:00September 23rd, 2021|Friday Famous Failures|6 Comments

Why the U.S. Isn’t On the Metric System

Try ordering a 113.3981-grammer burger at your local McDonald’s or Burger King. And then don’t be surprised when they don’t understand your order! That’s because the United States has not yet fully adopted the metric system. As a result, most U.S. citizens are not familiar with it ...

By |2023-02-22T09:18:55-06:00September 3rd, 2021|Tuesday Tidbits|27 Comments