The Niagara Falls Ice Bridge Disaster of 1912 | Episode 40

On today's very special episode, you will hear a tale of love and heroism unlike anything we have ever told. But at the same time, you're gonna hear about people riding over waterfalls in rubber balls and barrels and jet skis. So yeah, it's an emotional mixed bag of an episode. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday Histories Most Dangerous Podcast. Together we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and on inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, we will discuss the blood thirstiest natural wonder in the whole world, and is not the one you'd think. You're gonna learn just how dangerous and toxic women fashion is, and you will hear about people being dashed on rocks and drowned in every creative way imaginable. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating or even a mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin this world that we share, this fragile, pale blue dot floating in the cosmos. It is home to many natural wonders, places and sights that unite all mankind in unanimous awe, each more breathtaking than the last, and we'll be visiting one today. We've crisscrossed most of the planet on this show, always with the interest of learning and discovery at heart. That said, we do visit the horror of history, and even our most cherished and magnificent national treasures have from time to time made permanent residence out of visitors, if you follow my meaning. So now at parties, when someone asks if anyone knows when it comes to the most beautiful places in the world, which takes away the most breath and gas the most visitors, you will be ready to wow them with that obscure and fascinating factoid. There's the Grand Canyon in the southwest US. Check absolutely, people do fall in and die from exhaustion on the way back out. There's Mount Everest and Nepal, which turns visitors into souvenirs as it pleases, rest in peace green boots. And there's the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It sometimes claims a diver or three and is ongoing its own natural disaster. All these are uncoruestionably beautiful and potentially dangerous. But this is not a travel podcast exactly. We search out the most unusual or forgotten disasters, and only the worst will do. And on today's episode, we're going to take a walk through the history of the most bloodthirsty tourist trap in all the world. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to Niagara Falls. Yep, take a second, let that sink in. To recount the horror of this place would take hours. We will be recounting only the tiniest sliver of people killed by this marvel of nature. Since they started keeping records back in eighteen fifty, more than five thousand people have found themselves commuted to the afterlife over the lip of the falls, some by accident. My balance is bad. Others hoping to get caught up in Jesus' outstretched arms. My bank balance is bad. You just don't know. Depending who you ask, Anywhere from twenty to fifty people visit the falls every year without a return ticket. Again, if you follow my meaning, and if you are listening, to this right now and already thinking maybe I want to visit the falls. Please wait to the end of the story. I want to help. More than five thousand people were either crushed by the force of the water, drowned in the freezing spooling eddies, or suplexed against the rocks below. More than five thousand people and that's just in the last one hundred and seventy years. Niagara Falls was formed after the end of the Last ice Age. It started snowing about two and a half million years ago, buried everything in like a mile of ice as far south as Kentucky, and it didn't thaw until about twelve thousand years ago. As the continent thowed, melting glaciers created a little something called the North American Great Lakes. They're the biggest source of fresh water on the continent and the future site of the Great Water Wars. Anyway, after the thaw and the landscaping renao, water from Lake Erie made its way downhill towards Lake Ontario, the lowest of the Great Lakes. That water carved out a river on the way eventually reached the Niagara Escarpment. Think of it like a natural cliff that was formed because it was capped in a hard ass stone called dolomite, and it was surrounded by shale, and that all erode it away. Water basically wants to erode the landscape and break it down, turn it into kind of a like a rapids, but in this case the escarpment was strong enough to withstand and waterfalls were formed. If you've ever been to Niagara Falls before, you know that the base of the cataracts are really the kind of thing better explored at a distance. The first recorded story of anyone surviving a trip over the falls was a Michigan school teacher named Annie Edison Taylor in nineteen oh one. She was bootstrapping a fame based side hustle by riding an oak barrel down the Niagara River across Gravity's rainbow and survive to cash in on the tail. She must have thought pretty highly of her chances because of all the things that she took with her for safety or reassurance. She didn't take padding, she didn't take a helmet, she took her cat. Now, I cannot imagine the jarring, soaking, claustrophobic, noisy, petrifying misadventure of being trapped in a barrel on a one way trip, doing the most dangerous thing that I can think of, and with a cat. Longtime listeners may remember the one time that we talked about Saint Ulalia of Barcelona and they were sainted because they were killed by being rolled down a hill in a barrel filled with knives, And as far as I'm concerned, this is pretty much the same thing. But Taylor didn't get rich or canonized or lacerated to death floating in the mag rapids. She arrived bloodied, but she was alive. Others went on to try to repeat her trick, and well, they died of blunt force trauma, suffocation, drowning. They flew over the falls in barrels, canoes, rowboats, spheres. In nineteen eighty nine, two guys went over it as part of some kind of ill conceived anti drug campaign. In nineteen ninety five, some guy went over to try to raise awareness of homelessness issues, but he did it on a jet ski with a rocket propelled parachute. That whole idea doesn't really work for me thematically, and it didn't quite work out for him physically either. Parachute didn't quite work, and well, he died and not everybody dies just from the drop. Once you make your way to the bottom of the falls, you can find yourself under the water or behind the falls, and you get caught up in the swirls and the tumults and cycle helplessly over and over and over until you are well past caring. Bodies can take years to locate, some never are. And here's the thing. There's only one rule at Niagara Falls. One don't go over the railing. It's pretty simple as rules go, and if you follow it, you will have a lovely visit with a one hundred percent survival rate. Of those thousands of people who tried riding the river to get themselves marked off the census, a grand total of sixteen survived the experience. That is a survival rate of zero point three percent. And that's only if you go over the Canadian side. The survival rate if you go over the American side of the falls drops to zero. Yes, I'll explain. The Niagara River is a handy natural border between the US and Canada. It separates Ontario from New York State. But there's no such thing as Niagara Falls. That's just kind of a catchall name for the sake of tourists. There are actually three separate falls stretching across the face of the river as it cascades into the Niagara Gorge. From right to left, you have the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, which they're called that because they actually have a kind of horseshoe shape where the rock has eroded is very dramatic. That's separated from the American falls by Goat Island. And then there's the smaller Bridle Falls that's also on the American side, and that's separated by the much smaller Luna Island. These are the biggest waterfalls anywhere in North America. When Native peoples first discovered them thousands of years ago, they were truly truly thunderous and terrifying. The early Iroquois believed that he know that's their god of thunder, lived behind the falls. The thing is today the flow is really nothing compared to the old days. Because white people saw this with dollar signs in their eyes. It was perfect for generating hydroelectricity in an age where a single illuminated light bulb was considered a bit of a scientific miracle. Even Nikola Tesla got in on it. He came by and developed an alternating current method of delivering electricity that literally changed the world as we know it. And there is a giant honking statue of them overlooking the falls today. Because of it, water's been carefully controlled, the manipulated upstream to generate the hydroelectric power. Ever since today you get about one hundred and sixty eight thousand cubic meters of water flowing over the lip every minute. Just picture about one hundred and sixty Dodge caravans driving over the cliff every second, and it works out to about nine thy five hundred of them every minute, you know, just to make it easier to visualize. In fact, the whole thing has become so unnatural over time that back in nineteen sixty nine they turn the whole thing off just to collect the coins and bodies and give the thing a facelift. See America and Canada have cooperated in a spirit of preserving it for over one hundred years. They were really worried that that year the tourist season would be ruined because people would not want to be taking their wedding photos in front of some dried up old cliff, But it all kind of worked out because people describe the base of the falls like the scene from Poltergeiss with all the skeletons in the pool. The biggest difference between visiting Niagara Falls from Canada and the US is the view, and of course, speaking of the view, the consensus is the Canada lucked out. A panoramic view of all three waterfalls is available from the edge of the gorge well from the US side. They've built observation decks to help, but it's still not that easy to see. The American falls themselves are only really visible if you have pay to enter the cave of the Winds walkways, and even at that you're really only seeing them from the bottom. Oh yes, that's a point. You can get pretty close to the falls, and that's really the point of today's story. In the winter months, when it got particularly cooled out, the mist and spray coming off the falls froze into a kind of a crust that made it look as if the falls had stopped moving. They like they'd frozen solid, but not really. What happens is Lake Erie would freeze and break up and freeze and break up, and it would create these huge chunks of floating ice. This ice and slush would make their way down the river from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, but once they hit the waterfall, they'd blorp over the lip and then pile up, freezing together and covering up all the rocks, creating a massive frozen honk of ice at the base of the falls, and then that pile pushes up and out of the water as it continues to build. They describe the results as being like a suspended glacier, more than thick enough to walk on. Some years it would reach as much as one hundred feet thick, or rise as much as forty feet above the water, and from the base of the Horseshoe Falls, all of this could reach more than a mile downstream. Some years it would form as early as December and last all the way till April, but then other years no ice bridge at all. An eighteen forty two pictorial guide to Niagara Falls described it like this. The river never freezes over, but large masses of ice are sometimes collected and blocked in so as to form a natural bridge, extending up to the foot of the falls and for up to two miles down the stream. Magnificent views of the Cataract are then obtained from the frozen platform and splendors surpassing the polar seas are beheld. For over one hundred years, people had this incredible opportunity to climb onto the ice and simply walk to the falls. This was back in an age when you could climb the Great Pyramids to urinate, so rules were not really as big a thing as they are now. They called this annual occasion the ice Bridge, and it connected the American and the Canadian sides together. Only photos can really help you understand the scale and the size of this thing. On a busy day, thousands of people would climb down the Niagara Gorge to play and explore on this incredible wonder and without any rules or safety guidelines, you could pretty much do what you want. Case in point, if you can picture how far Clifton Hill is from the falls. Some people would start from the top of the hill, skate down across the road, down the path that leads to the Maid of the Mistok, descending into the gorge at fantastic speed with hairpin turns until they hit the bridge and they usually wiped out. To be more inclusive, they did build a mechanical elevator to help people make the descent without risking the climb. A good year for ice development was welcome by the locals and advertised heavily by guides and hotels and toboggan shops to tourists. It became the main winter draw for the whole area. The busiest day I found described had twenty thousand people walking around the base of the falls. They'd be out there all day watching tobogganers sledting down the ice mounds, and the people who ate it on the way down were described as coming to grief and depending on the injury, would bring people to tears with laughter and applause. Vendors even set up shops to sell food and souvenirs to the tourists. Now, if you're picturing some kind of like winter fair size stands, noop. These things were the size of five bedroom houses, and there were seven of them built right onto the ice to sell chochkeys or photographs or snacks to tourists. And every year they had to drag these things up and down the cliffs, but it was worth it. Nearest the middle of the bridge was a booth that sold oos. Sh don't tell anyone because it was a league goal and the absolute worst kept secret in the entire region. But when it came time to settle up in court, the owners would argue that the shifting ice meant that their booth had actually been in the wrong country when they were charged, and you'd be surprised how often that worked. Today's story takes place on February the fourth, nineteen twelve. It was a beautiful day and the ice was almost a mile wide and eight feet thick, which by the math, should mean it would be able to support the weight of a Boeing seven forty seven. It was a beautiful day and around noon there were maybe only about thirty five people out on the ice, enjoying the day. Couple strolled on romantic walks, others were having snowball fights. The sun shone warmly on them, and all felt safe and very secure. Hey, remember that guidebook. Somewhere hidden around the back was a mention of caution Around the ice bridge the river was said to be monitored carefully for any signs of breakup. For quote, once the ice goes, it goes with a rush, Woe be to any unhappy mortal carried down with it. Well, it was at this moment, without more than a groan to announce that anything was up, that the ice bridge began to split and move. Now, normally, when we described disasters, one comment trait is that most disasters are kind of conspicuous. They're loud, and they're really hard to ignore. But there were no jarring explosions throwing people at their feet. Here, the ice simply cleaved into sections that became playthings for the water beneath. The breakup of the ice bridge is the kind of thing that wouldn't normally begin to happen for months, and certainly not while people were still on it. Tourists dropped their toboggins and their mugs a hooch, and they ran scrambling to safety up the sides of the gorge. Ignacious Roth and Burrel Hecock had been having a snowball fight on the ice at the time, and when they saw what was happening, the ice separating between them, they sprinted to the Canadian shore as fast as they could, and as they approached, the ice separated, creating a gulf of wine between them and safety. People on the shore look back horrified and cried out, but Roth didn't hesitate. He just went for it, and he didn't make it, but he was able to wade across the water and was hauled out by the onlookers. Hackcock, on the other hand, he was right behind him and about to try his luck at running long jump, but just before he leapt he stopped. He'd heard a cry for help coming from behind him. Still on the ice. Oh that sucks. Just imagine being less than a dodge caravan's length away from safety and the warm embrace of well wishers, but instead now they're all staring at you like, yeah, so what you're gonna do? Bruh? You know the meme with people trying to think with all the math equations floating around them. Imagine that but with ethics questions. He didn't jump for a minute. He just stood there doing a ton of silent math and soul searching before he finally turned away from his chance to escape and he ran back out onto the ice. He was only seventeen years old. Turns out an older couple, Eldridge and Clara Stanton, had also been under the ice when it began to split and move. They'd also tried to split for Canada, but Clara collapsed and we assume from exhaustion see here's the thing. In a nineteen twenty issue of The Ladies Home Journal, women's exercise was described as consisting of housework, stair usage, and running in place, carried out to the point of perspiration and no further. Physical stamina was not a hallmark of the age, and in fairness, women passing out cold at the slightest emotional or physical shock seemed really, really normalized. There's a lot of theories that exist about why everybody fainted so much, everything from women's suffocating garb to pre programmed societal expectations. Ever see a photo of a woman holding a bedpost with a chambermaid's foot on her back, and she's pulling the ties on a corset as tight as their strength would allow. This was a fashion that actually changed human physiology. Ribs were displaced, lungs were squashed, Some organs were compressed against the spine or into the lower abdomen, and all of this not only made it hard to breathe, but the heart struggle to pump blood and assuming food made it past the circumference of the abdomen and into the stomach, digestion became an afterthought. Some described them as the most awful instruments of torture. In an eighteen ninety one article titled the Slaves of Fashion, quote, it is difficult to imagine a slavery more senseless, cruel, or far reaching in its injurious consequences than that imposed by fashion on civilized womanhood. The tight lacing required by the wasp waste has produced generations of invalids and bequeathed to posterity, suffering that will not vanish for many decades. I remind the listener high heel shoes weren't a thing yet, and comparing anything against actual slavery. Slavery is incredibly rude, so I apologize on their behalf. Again, this from an age where instead of addressing the issue they literally built fainting rooms and swooning couches for it. Speaking of intrusive clothing, you also have to remember that on top of the corset there were thick woolen underwear, something called a bustle pad, a full skirt lined with steel hoops and buoyed by a huge array of horsehair crinoline. Then there was a petticoat and a bonnet on top. If the weight or the heat didn't get you, maybe the allergies. Will ever hear of a famous poet named Henry Longfellow, Well, his wife was killed wearing this kind of gear. She came in contact with a match. Without getting into the details, I'm just going to say that she was thoroughly trapped by your outfit and unable to escape as it burst into flames. And as difficult as it was for her to get into the outfit in the first place, removing her corpse proved just as difficult. Speaking of on sexy, another hallmark of the era was all the poisonous makeup. If I covered my face and led an arsenic to enhance my mind by natural beauty, I would pretty much expect to pass out hourly too. What I wouldn't expect was to wake up in my fainting room getting mad, figured by a doctor attempting to treat my hysteria. Yep, it is a thing, look it up. I've already said too much. Whatever the cause of Clara Stanton's wipe out that day, let's be honest, neither her husband or Burrel had the odds stacked against them just for being gendered and fashionable. Burrell ran back to the couple and, together with Eldridge helped Clara back to her feet, and the three began the perilous streak to shore. For about a minute, the ribbon of water separated them from shore had grown in size and ferocity. They found themselves trapped on an ice floe in the middle of a raging torrent. The ice beneath their feet rocked and pitched and moved downstream, leaving the falls, the horrified faces of the onlookers, and any chance of potential rescue farther and farther away. They had no idea how anyone could possibly save them, and they certainly didn't see any real way of saving themselves. They were trapped on a rickety piece of ice the size of a small parking lot, but picking up speed as they continue downstream. So here's the question. If this were you right now standing on iffy ice, would you know what to do? Most people have no idea how dangerous a frozen lake or river can be, So let's take a minute to talk about making nice with ice. I live near a bay that regularly freezes and attracts dozens of winter lake enthusiasts every day, and even though it's incredibly safe, every few years, maybe somebody loses a truck or a tent or a life. Even if you're drilling holes to judge the thickness of the ice you're standing on, there are plenty of reasons it might not be as safe as you think. Depth, current, debris, air, temperature, and shock waves all affect ice. Color is probably the best way to judge its safety. Clear blue ice is the strong ice you're ever gonna find. It's probably multiple feet thick, and because it's clear, you can judge for yourself. Anything closer to white is probably only going to be about a half as strong as blue, and it's probably going to be cloudy and a pure white because it's made out of wet snow that froze to the surface. Gray ice is the worst. It's gray because you can still see water through it. And if you've ever been walking across ice and the texture or the color changed, or you began to hear things from beneath your feet, you know just how frightening that can be. First things, First, you're gonna want to draw attention to yourself, you know, let people know in case you disappear before you disappear. But you also want to get low and spread out your weight. If that's not enough and you end up polar bear plunging your way through it, the first thing that you're gonna need to do is not panic. You're wearing heavy winter clothing and boots and they're going to catch a lot of weight and work against you. But the first and only thing that you should be concerned with is breathing. See, we all have this thing called a cold water response. Once that cold hits, your body will contract and it's gonna want to suck down air, which is an obvious design flaw since you may be underwater at the time. Cold water on skin is phenomenally good at shedding body heat, and people will say you're probably entering a hypothermic reaction. But like the good lady said, ain't nobody got time for that. If you ever found yourself having a cold water response and kind of seizing up over it, maybe even mildly panicking over it, you're gonna want to say that you don't like it, and you wonder what you should do. Well, remember my words, this will pass. You want to breathe slowly, keep your head above water, and keep your body pointed towards safety, and remember that all pain is temporary. Once the reaction passes, you are now free to get to the business of saving yourself. So let's get to it. Well, like I said, turn towards the shore so you're looking towards where you broke through. But don't try pulling yourself up and climbing out, because well, for one, that's how you got in there. The ice is already proven it sucks. And how many times do you really think you need to get dunk tanked in a row? You're gonna put your arms out, You're gonna stretch across the surface, and once you get yourself kind of propped up, you're gonna kick like hell to propel your weight up and over the lip. And don't worry about points for style here, you will earn none. Once you're on the ice, crawl on your stomach or just roll away from the hole, whatever you need to do to prevent having to go back to step one again. Spreading your arms and legs will help you distribute your weight more evenly, like I said, but don't try standing up unless you're good. Ensure that the ice is gonna be able to take your weight like that. But let's say it's not you, it's your friend and they just went for an unannounced swim. Well that's a little different. You have the benefit of being able to signal for help and call with a long, languorous wave to begin with. But what you're gonna need to do is get as close to the hole as you can without becoming a tenant yourself. Lay down on the ice to distribute your weight, and slowly crawl towards the whole. If you add access to a pole or a branch, or even a very long scarf, you could use that to extend your reach. Once you have a grip on the vic you pull while they kick, but no high fiving. Once they get to safety, you need to be gentle. See. The thing is they're probably becoming hypothermic, and too many jarring movements can actually trigger a heart attack. The core is losing its heat, so what you need to do is take them somewhere warm but not too warm. And yeah, I know this all sounds really finicky, but too much direct heat can damage the skin and they can also trigger a heart attack. So remove wet clothing. I mean, she's cut it off. If you have to. You want to cover the person with blankets. Some people think that you should take off your own clothes and get in there with them, but again no excess of movements. You can give them something warm to drink, just as long as it's not alcoholic or caffeinated or carbonated. You don't have to tell people that they died because they've burped in at a heart attack. And if you're thinking about compresses or hot water bottles, the only places you want to throw them, I mean place them the chest, the crutch, and the neck. You try to warm up the extremities like the arms and the legs, and it could actually just force cold blood back into the stream the heart, the lungs, and the brain, and it drops the core temperature and can also be fatal. Hypothermia can develop seriously enough that they may appear unconscious with no signs of a pulse or breathing. If the person's breathing is stopped or it appears dangerously low or shallow, you can begin CPR immediately as long as you're trained, but always remember half of everything that you think you should do could result in their death, So getting emergency responders on the line as quickly as possible should be your number one priority. As massive as the ice flow was The Stantons and Hecock were helpless against the whims of the water. It left them balancing precariously. It continuously threatened to slip them into the river. At this point, their faith in its relative strength shattered as the ice flow broke in half, with all three collect on the same side. So that's good. But just like watching three people stranded on an island watching a boat or a plane disappear without seeing them, Clara, Eldridge and Barrow watched as the other half of their floating island broke away, glided peacefully to the American shore and parked itself for the convenience of none. That's a tough one. I mean, in any disaster, it's important to keep faith in all lose hope. But that was a tough one right there. They stared at it as they continued gliding downstream. Shortly after, the ice again quickly split and separated, and this time it separated Barrow from the Stantons. The two floes separated, and witnesses saw them wave goodbye to one another across the water as the distance grew. I mean, that's terrible, but all was not lost. The three trap tourists would still pass beneath bridges downstream. As long as they remained upright and above water, these would be their best chance for rescue, and sure enough, by the time they reached the next bridge, it was covered in police, firemen, and railway workers. They dissembled on the bridge deck and hung ropes to the water level. As his ice flow passed beneath them. Earl grabbed a line and a great cheer rose from above. Except the thing with more old timey ropes, they tended to stretch and under burrels. Wait, that's exactly what it did. So imagine holding the rope and watching you would be rescuers break into cheers and applauds while they are dipping you mercilessly back into the freezing river. He managed to keep his grip on the rope despite the massive blocks of ice pommeling him repeatedly. As the men pulled, finally lifting him from the water. He'd suffered what amounted to being hit by several cars. Still, he clung to the rope, dripping and freezing, and the crowd cheered as a miracle unfolded before their eyes for about a minute. Then the applause kind of petered out as bureau began to slip down the rope. His grip was weakened from the cold, and he slid faster than they could pull. But he was so determined not to let things end this way, he bit the rope as hard as he could, sinking his teeth into the wet fibers out of desperation. Imagine anyone so resilient and tenacious that they tried to hold up their own body weight by their teeth. The men pulled as feverishly as they could, but before he could be hauled up and over the bridge, the rope went slack, and the rescuers were launched back by their own weight. Burrell Hacock had fallen. His body disappeared beneath the rapids and was never seen again. If you were a mentally disturbed time traveler that loved watching people's heartbreak, I can confidently recommend that bridge at that time. And there's something I forgot to mention, and I'm really sorry I should have mentioned it earlier. See, most people when they come to the falls, they come to stare at the falls. And what most people fail to take in is that just below the falls, if you follow the river, you will find some thing unspeakably awful. The raw power of the Niagara River is plainly obvious and stunning. It races by over fifty kilometers of thirty miles per hour, splashing and spraying, and it dissolves from a river into full on rapids, dangerous rapids easily in the top ten most dangerous rapids anywhere in the world. Class five rapids are described as extremely difficult, long and very violent rapids with highly congested roots. Rescue conditions are difficult, and there is a significant hazard to life in the event of a mishap. Sadly, for the Stantons, these are class six rapids, and that's on a scale that only goes up to six. Class six rapids are described quote the difficulties of class five carried to the extreme, nearly impossible, and very dangerous. These are called the whirlpool rapids, and anyone on them could expect fifteen foot tall waves and about fifty feet of water. Wait did we say world, Yeah, we talked about them back in our Lake Penner episode. The rapid flow of water exiting the Niagaragorge eroded the escarment about forty two hundred years ago, and it resulted in one of the world's only stable whirlpools, and this part of the river has claimed many lives and boats throughout the years, and now the poor Stantons were headed directly towards it. But they weren't licked yet. There were still two last bridges crossing the chasm before the rapids, and rescuers had filled them too. As the Stantons passed under the first, Eldridge grabbed a passing rope and tied it around his wife's waist. A great cheer rose up, but as soon it was pul tat, it snapped. It was all down to the last bridge, and as they passed beneath, Eldridge grabbed another rope and began tying Clara to safety. Then they started to talk, and those on the bridge, confused as they were, couldn't tell what they were saying from that far above, and all they could do was watch as the Stantons kneeled together on the ice, kissed and held each each other. They had decided to stay together. Those on the bridge watched helplessly as the ice beneath them disappeared into the mist and foam of the rapids. A watch was kept along the river for weeks after. In hopes of recovering their bodies, but they left this world together and were never seen again. That day was the last day anyone was ever allowed onto the ice below the falls. So what happened, Well, a lot of disasters happened because of bad planning or poor engineering, or bad weather, negligence, I mean, you name it. But in this case, this happened at a time when understanding hydrological conditions wasn't really a thing. You could chalk it up to ignorance about natural conditions we didn't understand, like you know, people caught off guard in a surprise volcanic eruption. But what makes this disaster unique is it all came down to mental bias. People had been drunkenly slipping and sliding all over this thing for us century. You don't pussy foot around every sidewalk tile just because it might have a sink hole beneath. You stride with confidence because you've never been sucked into a sinkhole before. And psychologically speaking, it's called normalcy bias. People believe something bad won't happen just because it's never happened before. We've all experienced it, and once you have it, it changes the way you react to things. You have difficulty reacting to something you haven't experienced before, which is a long way of saying that even when the signs and mornings are going off in your face, you'll try to interpret them in the most optimistic way possible. People who have enjoyed this unique experience for as long as they could remember, and the ice had never betrayed them before, so people assumed it never would. But professor, what's my big takeaway from this episode? You ask, well, again, first, I'm not a professor, But more importantly, have you ever been in an accident as a driver. For the first while, you're gonna drive like Charlie Church, you're paying all the rules and then some. But give it a week without another crash, and you're gonna start to forget, you know, signaling lane changes or putting on your seat belt because your safety bias has reset back in. Your takeaway from this episode is to know that statistically, your likelihood of being covered on this show are vanishingly small. But people do win lotteries, and they have planes fall on them and they get washed over waterfalls. Our brains betray us by softening our defenses. Experience is a great teacher, but a lack of negative experience is a pretty bad one. And this is part of my heartfelt pitch to keep listening to the show, become a little more engaged, and learn something that could potentially save your life. The body count on this day may have been small, but the entire industry that had sprung up around the ice bridge was destroyed in a single day. The collateral loss was astounding. Today, the falls are a much different place for one no more exploring the ice He can't buy a kinograph or a whisky snow cone from a shack in the middle of a river, but you can view the falls on foot by helicopter zipline, or a sky wheel, or a river cruise aboard the world famous made up the Mist. The falls have effectively become a tourist mecca, welcoming millions of visitors a year. I passed through there last week in the pouring rain, and it was still packed, and no one was worried they were going to die. No, of course not, why would they. They haven't died yet. Today. The only evidence of the area's incredible disastrous pass is a plaque mounted on the observation deck on the Canadian side. It reads to the memory of Barrell Hacock of Cleveland, Ohio, aged seventeen years who lost his life in a heroic attempt to rescue mister and missus Eldridge Stanton of Toronto, Ontario, when the ice bridge in the gorge immediately below was swept down the Niagara River and into the Whirlpool rapids February fourth, nineteen twelve. There are so many stories from Niagara Falls that this could have been an ambling course through history that lasted seven hours. There used to be a Niagara Falls Honeymoon Bridge just below the falls. It collapsed. It was brought down by collecting ice and it dropped into the river below and could easily be its own episode. Then there was the Scholenkoff power Station. It was built right into the wall of the river and created hydroelectricity for a huge part of both countries. But if you're thinking I don't think I've ever seen or heard of that one, well you probably didn't see. The shol cof fell victim to landslides powerful enough to drag most of the station off the wall and into the water below. I mean, the history of the area is so rife with disaster that when I was going over all the people who willfully took the plunge over the falls, I didn't even mention that there was one time a guy built a giant barge, loaded it with as many animals as he could find, and dropped it over the falls as entertainment. Two bears punched their way out of the boat and swammed ashore, but everything else died. And remember Annie Taylor, the lady with the barrel and the cat. She had craved fame so hard. After her fall, she hired a manager to make it happen. But you know what he did. He stole her barrel, and he traveled the country with a younger and more attractive woman who stole her identity. On a more serious note, if you or someone you care about is experiencing thoughts of self harm or suicide, understand that you are not alone and there are people ready to help. I mean, really, this is what Google is for. Or you can call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at one eight hundred two seven three talk. I've spoken with a handful of listeners who've swayed into this dark path before, and I always want to remind them that I still think about you. You can reach out to us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, where you can fire us an email to Doomsdaypod at gmail dot com. We're also on TikTok as Doomsday dot The dot podcast. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review and tell your friends. If you'd like to support the ongoing production of the show, you can find us at Patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo or Buy Me a Coffee dot com slash Doomsday. But if you could spare the money and had to choose, we ask you to consider making a donation to Global Metic. Global Metic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmedic dot ca. On the next episode, what's the difference between flour and explosives? Well, if you don't know that you are going to be incredibly confused by our next episode. It's the Washburn Mill explosion of eighteen seventy eight. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off, and thanks for listening.