I had an uncle who was working late at a factory that night. He was contracted to repair a very large electric motor and was working after the factory was shut down. When he was done with his repairs he turned on the motor and ALL the lights in the factory went out. He couldn't locate the night watchman, so he left the factory to drive home and noticed the lights were out on the whole block, and as he drove away he noticed the lights were out all over the city. He thought he had caused the whole blackout.
That is such a good story. As an electrician he knew that making a mistake could blow out circuits for the factory or possibly the whole block but oh my God the whole fucking City that is just hilarious
I had an interesting seat for the blackout. My dad was stationed at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island. I had just finished 5th grade. My friends and older brother were out and about late that evening, hanging out under the Verrazzano Bridge looking over the entrance to the bay. We were sitting on a rock wall that gave us a great view of the whole city. Then, rather unexpectedly, large square sections of the city started going black, one after another until even our own area went black. We had never experienced anything like this but knew immediately this was something significant. Being on a military base, we weren't really all that worried about riots or looters. There were family friends that had been in Manhattan that evening for a play at some theater and getting home without the subways proved to be a challenge for them. I remember the heat, even though having spent my early years growing up in Central Texas high heat was nothing new to me, but the humidity... THAT was different!! We eventually made our way home in the dark, braving a short cut on a road that took us past one of the old abandoned concrete bunkers that were all over the base and rumored to be haunted, which every kid our age took serious! It was a relief to be home... almost as much of a relief as when the power came back on and the A/C kicked on again. We were sitting directly under the bridge at the top of the treeline on the far shore of this image, asliceofbrooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/unnamed-2.jpg We watched MANY ships come and go from that vantage, including the Queen Mary II. Ft. Wadsworth was actually a collection of several older forts. It and Ft. Hamilton were used for guarding the entrance to the bay. They used disappearing guns that dropped out of sight after firing. The concrete bunkers were huge and right behind our home. Even though they were strictly off limits, kids were kids and we played all over them but generally stayed out of the deeper tunnels. Ft. Wadsworth is now some kind of National Park, but I think Hamilton might still be active. It would be really cool to see some videos about these two forts and those that came before them on the same spots as well as the guns themselves. The winter of 76/77 also merits an episode as it was one of the hardest winters in many many years. The bay froze. Reckless kids that we were, we jumped out on to the broken ice chunks floating in the water after the breakers came through to open up the bay, never realizing that one slip would have meant falling between the chunks of ice with little chance of climbing back out of the water. That winter was enough to convince me I did not want to spend winters further North than Dallas. Anything beyond that I consider the Great White North, fun to visit in summer, but to be avoided in winter ;-)
As someone who grew up in Chicago and now lives in Central Florida, I can agree. Chicago in the "not winter" months is a great place to visit, sight see, tour, experience and enjoy, but... my 53 year old body has little tolerance for temperatures below freezing (which I got to experience on my last visit home with my wife, just before Halloween of 2016 - We got to see snow flurries and shiver while waiting for the bus to take my wife to see the neighborhood where I had been born and spent my first 13 years. good times man, good times). If I only lived closer to the beaches, I might say Florida is truly lovely, but man the super humid heat from nearly 8 months of "summer" can really get to you...
I was a musician living on Bleecker St in the Village. We spent the night outside on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker, in front of Johnny's T Shirt City. He had a bonfire of candles on the corner. It was Goti's neighborhood, so we were like children at a camp out and had no idea at the time why Greenwich Village was so safe.
I remember both blackouts. The first was fun. We went up on the roof and enjoyed the sight of a black night. My parents spoke of black out drills during WWII. 1977 was another story. We closed the shades, had the doors locked, went down into the basement with flashlights, food, water and a radio. It's one of the few times Dad loaded his gun because of danger from humans. We knew people were going berserk on Jamaica Blvd. Our immediate neighborhood thankfully remained fairly untouched. Some cars on the street were stolen, vandalized, but ours was alright locked in the garage. The third blackout in 2003 I missed entirely, not even finding out about it until five days later. I was on a canoe trip in the Adirondacks with two other adults and twelve teenagers! No power problems where we were!
In 2003 people had a more public cooperative spirit, with traffic lights out the traffic flowed more smoothly as folks were courteous. And not as much disorder as in '77.
I was living in E. Lansing Mi during the 2003 blackout. It started with my gf and I thinking it was just our house so, let's get take-out. Leave the house and the first intersection is out. So on etc. until we realized eventually it was the whole east side of the country, never forget that. Definitely not violent. We ended up having a candle light dinner once the power went out where we were eating.
Thanks. Remember it well. I had just moved to NYC and lived in an apartment on Second Avenue in the East Seventies. I was resting in bed with the room lights off. Suddenly, the air conditioner stopped running and I heard a commotion on the street. I went to the window and saw only the lights of the traffic and the silhouettes of buildings. People seemed almost in a festive mood, perhaps because of the novelty. That dissipated fast. Fortunately, I lived in a relatively safe neighborhood and a secure building so it didn't occur to me to be concerned about security, but it got really hot in my apartment and there was no water. I didn't even think of going to work the next day. That would have involved going down 26 floors, getting to Wall Street, somehow, and going up the stairs to my office on the 52nd floor. NYC was the pits in the late '70s.
They talk about the number of people killed in events like this, but a large spike in births in April, 1978 shows that people were doing more than dying.
Yes they had no TV, but people did not have computers or internet in 1977. It would be almost 20 years later that people starting getting internet access.
I remember the black out. I was 13 years old. My family and I were driving from Long Island to Columbus Ohio and had left LI at night in order to avoid the heavy City daytime traffic. We were on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway traveling westbound. Normally, Manhattan gleamed over the roadway, it loomed like a giant advertisement for something sophisticated and glamorous. That night was vivid in my memory as the City was dark. We heard on the radio as we drove that whole area was without power and there was a lot of criminal behavior underway. It seemed so surreal and has never left my memory. It was a very hot night. My uncle was driving. He had a 75 Eldorado and we cranked the AC while we past the City. That night did have a huge impact on the City. It changed the City. In some ways a lot of the older City vanished after that. It certainly was a catalyst for change. Thank you THG. You brought back a moment in time for me that seems almost like a dream to me all these years later. I don't know how you choose your subjects but you certainly run the full gamut of subjects!
In my electrical engineering classes, we were taught that in 1977, many of smaller power plants in the area couldn't power up without an existing 'powered up' grid to join. As a result, power had to be restored working inwards from the areas that still had power, rather than being brought up in sections. That situation has now changed.
It may be similar to how a grid-tie inverter for wind or solar works. They sync their output to the grid so without an external sine wave to phase-align to they won't transfer current.
Yes I remember that Blackout very well. I was a police officer in Bay Ridge Brooklyn and my Father was the Vice President of Con Edison. The crime rate was unreal, Me and and my partner had to work for 36 hours straight. The two of us arrested 35 people in that span. My father Took off the tie and went and worked in the field which many of the higher ups did. T.H.G. You did a great job on this video.
I was there. I was an Airfreight truck driver in 1977. I remember being on the interstate driving back from Kennedy airport and it was almost impossible to tell where you were. Many of the signs relied on electric light to be visible. I also remember watching the water from firefighters (burning buildings above) running down the cliffs onto the Cross Bronx Expressway as I was on my way to the George Washington Bridge.
I'm so old I remember this! Another great video! I'm still catching up on a few of your video's since I didn't discover them until early 2020. History is timeless! Thank you!
I remember both the 65 and 77 blackouts very well. At the time of the 77 blackout I was in my room at home studying for a college course while listening to a Barry White record. I recall that the power didn't just go out immediately -- it was a slow process which took about a minute or so. The first thing I noticed was Barry White's singing going from his normal, smooth baritone voice to a slow, distorted warble. At the same time the lights started going slowly dim. Then after a minute everything went dark. Two things immediately happened: 1. I initially thought I had passed away because it was pitch black. 2. I have to preface this with the fact that I am a lifelong geek, nerd, etc. That being said, I was notorious for being the source of blown fuses in the house because of my electronic experiments and whatnot. Which, at the time of the blackout, my dad who was taking a bath at the time started screaming at me about blowing another fuse. It was my dad's screaming at me about the fuse which made me realize that I was not dead. To this day, however, I think he still blames me for the blackout occurring...hahahahaha. On a more serious note, our neighborhood remained relatively calm during the event -- it was only when the lights came back on did we find out about the other areas of NYC that had suffered.
Our utility (Wisconsin Power & Light) used to put out flyers in your bill every once and a while on what to do in a power failure. Unplug any appliances in your house to protect them from low voltage/and or spikes, obviously electronics are VERY sensitive to damage. Turn your lights off, yet leave one light on in say your kitchen or bathroom. When the power comes back on watch this light, if it does not flicker or flash and stays at full brightness for a couple of minutes then you can slowly turn your lights back on and plug in your appliances one at a time. This way you can help avoid a power surge that can cause the grid to collapse again.
I lived in the Bronx during that time. I was only 10 at the time, but I remember the crimes, the heat wave, the Son of Sam murders, etc. I didn't remember the cause of the blackout but it seemed longer than 25 hours, probably because of the heat. Thanks for posting this, you did a great job explaining it!
Like nearly all blackouts it was the result of overloading transmission lines. Electric grids are delicate balancing acts - every minute of every day the generation must equal loss plus load. If the load suddenly drops from a line tripping off, the system voltage will rise to damaging levels and the system frequency will rise unless generation is shut down. If too much generation is shut down, the voltage and frequency drop; if the frequency is out of limits. When large areas are affected initially the service can't be recovered because the frequency can't be synchronized with the wider world; everything has to be brought down to zero in the affected area, the system has to be sectionalized by opening switches, and it has to be restored but by bit. In a city the size of New York that is a very time consuming project... 25 hours is pretty fast for that.
The Black Out of 1965! What a year that was for me. I was caught in the black out taking a shower after wrestling practice and thought only that the power had failed in the school, but on going outside we saw that all the lights were out everywhere. That winter the blizzard of 1966 took place and once again I was at wrestling practice and trudged home through deepening snow. I remember my brother was sick and I tried to do his paper route, but the snow drifts were too high and I couldn't deliver all of his papers. He would get an award for never missing a school day in 4 years because he was sick only when the school had been closed!
That one was big league! Caused by a faulty protection circuit around Niagara Falls, IIRC, it did the usual cascade thing and took everything down over an impressive part of NE US and into Canada.
I was there in 1965 and 1977 and remember them both. I was 10 in '65. It was neat watching the darkness to the west from the attic of our Queens home where earlier had been the city skyline. We burned candles and since our gas stove still worked, and there was food in the pantry, the blackout did not cause a lot of difficulty. In '77, even though I was just out of college, my mother was much more fearful and forbade us from going outside. For her sake I complied and watched over my siblings. An old Japanese transistor radio provided the latest news, but finding fresh batteries was a problem. Blackouts are like assassinations and space shuttle explosions - you remember them clearly many decades later.
I was 16 and staying in Brooklyn with a cousin. We just bought the new Fleetwood Mac rumors album and we're listening to it when the power went out. Never forget that night.
We lived in Connecticut then, stationed out there by the US Navy. It was a time when my then husband was at sea, or on duty, i don’t recall, but he wasn’t there in our upstairs apartment in Norwich. I recall sitting on the Deacons Bench at the end of the hall, in front of a window overlooking main street. I had lit a candle and read by its light, waiting for the lights to come back, but content with the candle light, and a book. Norwich was a quiet little city that night, as always.
I was in Brooklyn for all the blackouts. The Broadway you mention is the one that runs through Brooklyn. That stretch of road in Bushwick and ENY were hit hardest by looting and arson.
I lived on West 70th Street near Broadway in 1977. I remember how eerie it was. Broadway was empty and the dark buildings were scary. My husband and I walked a couple of blocks...then hunkered down in our dark apartment. We were young, and all of it - the heat, the crime, the city's fiscal problems - didn't affect us very much. There was another Blackout in August 2003. I was working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and had to walk home - but it was afternoon, so no problem. By then we had lived through 9/11 in Manhattan, so a Blackout that affected the entire Northeast and part of Canada - no problem... It's only in more recent years that I've come to appreciate how fragile our national power grid is. This is truly scary.
Your channel is so rightly titled. This is history worth remembering. I was 13 when this happened I lived in Philadelphia down the road from New York the news coverage news people had big big balls back then cuz they were out in the middle of it you won't believe some of the shots they came off the TV
I looked up the origin of the phrase "with bells on" and my inner monolog and i havent seen one of your videos for over a month. You are now the voice of history in my head. I wonder how many other people hear it too, if they do i think that deserves to be remembered 😄
Thank you for covering the great Black Out of 1977, Lance. If anyone is interested there is a VH1 documentary that explains the economic situation in NYC and the effects of this black out on the birth of hip hop, called _'NY77 : The Coolest Year In Hell'_
Wow I remember that I was just a young kid but when the lights went out I thought it was really cool something out of the norm we went around the corner cuz we heard a lot of sirens and commotion and we saw stores being looted crowds cops chasing people what a night.
In 1977, I was an engineer working for The Singer Company, Link Division. I had just been reassigned to work on a support contract to upgrade and enhance a nuclear power plant simulator at Con Edison's Indian Point Power Station. Indian point was the training center for Con Ed and it also supported other utilities for training of the operation of nuclear power plants. It was also where two nuclear power generating plants were located that provided power to New York City. The Buchanan substation was nearby Indian point and it was where the lighting strikes took down the power to the city. I had the opportunity to see first hand how the dedicated engineers and management of Con Ed went into action to help get Indian Point back on the grid and power flowing to New York City again. Everyone always talks about the disaster that this caused, but few people mention the dedicated people of Con Ed who worked day and night to get the power flowing again.
Subbed! I don't clearly remember the 77 event but I was 11 in 65 and had to complete my newspaper deliveries in multiple 3 story walk up apartment blocks in east Toronto. No emergency lighting in those days!
Yes! 👍👍It's not like "looting" was invented in the 70's, Like it was something that was "just NOT done" by the "better" folk in '65..Hell, The Watts riots happened MONTHS BEFORE the '65 NYC blackout! And November in New York City is a BIT chillier than August in Los Angeles! 🤷♂️
Although too young to remember the blackout of 1964. It was repeated again 2003. Not just New York city but the whole state, parts of Ohio and Southern Ontario. That is history worth remembering.
History Guy Your history is very accurate when it comes to the nuclear disasters we almost had. I've read "Command and Control" a book you have also cited in your podcasts and you do stay true with other credible historians. Please continue your good work. I've learned a lot. I was never interested in history that much as a young man, but as I get older I've learned to love it. It's also important that our posterity have it accurately preserved. You have helped in this endeavor. IMHO.
The History Guy has single-handedly changed my outlook on nuclear threat. Well, I had watched one of his episodes and soon after that watched the old Twilight Zone episode, "The Old Man in the Cave" set in a post nuclear apocalyptic world. I wondered, "After a nuclear exchange, who would say to themselves 'I'm glad we did that?' " For 75 years we have not found a practical use for nuclear weapons and have demonstrated the tremendous practical value of precision conventional munitions. MAD won't protect us from accidents like the Norwegian Rocket Incident. I only ask one thing of Death: that I not die as a result of doing something stupid. I recommend that philosophy to the nuclear powers of the world. Enough already.
If you listen to the first 3 minutes and 37 seconds where he gets to the word staggering 12%, you realize in 2021 we're doing it all over again without the power outage!
I've always believed that what this outage really revealed was that generating sources were too far from the loads they were supplying. So when things started going south, there was quickly a cascade as the transmission lines couldn't handle the power being shunted over them. This left many various generating facilities isolated and made it difficult to restore services. It basically had to be a cold start-up and that can take a LONG time!
I was there that night. The restaurant we were eating in when the lights went out offered us free ice cream, as they would have to throw it away anyway, and they were unable to cook us anything for dinner. After we left the restaurant, and attempted to drive back to our hotel, I watched the looting up close: The looters drove trucks up to the gates over store windows, chained the gates to the back of their trucks, and drove away, taking the security gates with them. Then the looters would run in, and carry away the merchandise. The infamous "Tombs" prison was re-opened that night - and crammed with wall-to-wall prisoners, as fast as the police could catch them. A family friend had grown up in the city, and spent the night finding bewildered New Yorkers who had never traveled home from work overland - they only knew the subway routes. He spent the entire night helping people figure out where home was! I remember the next day, the temperature was 102 when the power came back on.
anybody who wants to know more about the blackout: plug "1977 coolest year in hell" into the search line while the part about the blackout itself is from about 40 to 55 minute marks, the entire hour & 23 minutes of it does a really good job explaining nyc life then from the standpoints of punk, disco, and yes, hiphop/rap music.
Yep. This is a good point and thank you for mentioning that VH1 / Mtv documentary. Lance alludes to it in this video, talking about Grandmaster Cas (of The Cold Crush Brothers) at 6:37 I highly recommend the other documentary for anyone wanting a further look into the economic situation in New York City around this time, and this blackout's effect on the birth of hip hop. _"NY77 : The Coolest Year In Hell'_ tells the story in a fun and entertaining way. 😊
I like living right on the edge of a small town. One minute's walk from my front door I can be in the countryside; 20 minutes walk in the other direction I can get to a railway station from where a train will get me to central London in 90 minutes.
I know this is an older video, but two things... I'm from Brooklyn and the heatwave and blackout of 1977, and the insane blizzard of 1978 are some of my earliest memories. Also, I'm surprised that in the few history based channels I follow, I don't remember seeing anything on Ed Koch. Maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker, but I think Hizzoner is definitely a character worth remembering. An interesting bit there.. I am a fan of MASH and back in the day when we first got a VCR I recorded MASH every day and I watched those tapes until they wore our. I kept one tape specifically for one of the commercials. It was a reelection video for Ed Koch and next to Koch, very prominently was Donald Manes, who committed suicide while under suspicion of corruption. If I remember correctly that scandal hurt Koch pretty badly. I think this is a big event for New Yorkers of a certain age.
Strange coincidence that this video comes up on my recommendation a day after watching the Amazon movie Wonderstruck which is set in 1977 during the heatwave and the movie ends with the blackout. Myself being born in the mid 80s I didn't know about these events before now. Great video!
The History Guy videos are awesome.............they are straight to the point and the topics are sometimes so obscure that they are just ignored in the regular study of history. I see tons of history videos on UA-cam but The History Guy is #1..........and I'm not sure how he does it but he even makes Bow Ties cool!!
Don’t forget about the Great Northeastern Blackout of 2003. I was in NYC at the time and the blackout was an extraordinary unforgettable experience. The 9th largest blackout by population world wide. More recent history perhaps, but very much worthy of remembrance.
I had friends and acquaintances who lived in NYC. They remarked during 65 & 66, "New York was a nice kind of dirty." A few years later, "NYC is just dirty, dirty." I had not thought about the economy. All these years, I remembered these remarks. Thank you for helping me understand what had happened. ,
A lesson not heeded, as NY and the whole Northeast went dark again in 2003... As for the City of NY, growing up in SW Connecticut in the 1980's, NYC was a CRAZY place. Same problem hit many northeast cities in the 1970's and 80's. Bridgeport CT went from a manufacturing center to a deeply troubled city, and now, like NYC is clawing its way back.
Stephen Britton. Hmm. I think some lessons were well learned, but pushing through changes to power grid structure, management and oversight had been a lifelong career for many people well before this. The alarm bell had been rung, but by no one with lobbying power or deep pockets.
I was in a bowling alley when the lights went out. Hard time to find my shoes. Anyway, I lived thru 3 black outs.in NYC so far. I expect to see another sooner than later.
When I worked for an electric utility I did a presentation on blackouts for our department (IT field support). Wikipedia made it easy. The big picture: 2 of them in the '60s, 4 in the '70s, 6 in the '80s, 6 in the '90s, 10 in the '00s, 10 in the '10s. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry watchdog, estimates it will cost about half a trillion dollars to bring the US transmission infrastructure up to modern standards. So, yes... sooner than later.
I'd like to see a piece on the first blackout. On 9 November 1965, at 5:27 pm, I was at Columbus Circle with friends and we could see the lights going out block by block, coming toward us. The city was calm and friendly, like the world's biggest block party. There were jokes about all the people stuck on escalators. I had a battery powered tape recorder and radio and recorded some of the on-air coverage. Fifty-eight years ago, I wonder if I still have it somewhere.
@@michaelsmith1094 The effect's of an earth directed CME are charged particles and energetic X-rays. The lightning was the ionosphere discharging thru the storm. But electricity flows through earth too. If the solar flare occurs inside a coronal hole opening, and adjacent to where earth's magnetic connection happens to be at the time? It can be a problem within 8 minutes of the flare, CME or no! Earth's global electric circuit's ability to process the trillions of terrawatts of energy flowing, can be exceeded. Electricity of varying voltages, is induced into conductors, like the really big power lines, and anything else metallic and inadequately insulated btw. Point is, you can't adequately insulate transmission lines. You must sever the path of the current and redirect it. You have to kill the power to save it and they have technology and plans to try But when a big CME hits our magnetosphere? The Van Allen belts are compressed into the ionosphere, as the magnetosphere is overwhelmed and it's structure is deformed. Earth is, for all intents and purposes, a capacitor that leaks and discharges electrical energy from the sun. And we, like birds on a wire, are oblivious to the potential of the energy flowing beneath our feet. Today a Carrington Event sized, earth facing X flare, or more likely, series of big M and bigger X flares, with CMEs to match? That could wreak serious havoc. Safeguards aren't cheap, and somebody's gotta make the call to shut down everything, before the currents are induced. Shit happens. It'll suck. We'll deal with it or our kids will or theirs. For now? There's beer and paychecks 👍
That is a very popular myth. Solar flares (Coronal Mass Ejections) release hordes of charged particles that are herded by Earth's magnetic field to impact regions of the Earth hundreds of miles apart. That produces DC currents in transmission lines that connect the regions, and those DC currents can saturate the cores of the large power transformers, reducing the amount of power the transformers can carry without destroying themselves. There is nothing sudden about this - it ramps up over a period of several minutes or hours. During that time, when a risk is identified, opening the breakers on the vulnerable lines prevents damage. Only a few regions of the planet are vulnerable; we don't even consider the problem here in the US Southwest. (Retired last year from 34 years field support in a Fortune 100 electric utility - I did a report on this a few years ago.)
@@michaelsmith1094 It is not a labor issue, just equipment on vulnerable lines. The changes would be minor; programming of the existing protective relaying equipment to watch for the current spikes that are produced by core saturation. That would trip the line and prevent expensive transformer damage. In my third of a century in an electric utility in the Southwest we went through half a dozen events and we didn't have a whimper.
@@TheScmtnrider Not quite that way. The currents induced by CMEs are not damaging in themselves; they interfere with the ability of transformers to handle their rated currents. It is no big deal to open the breakers on vulnerable transmission lines. Were you affected by the flares in 1972, 1989, 2000, 2003, or 2006? In summer 1996 I was relaxing by the pool in Phoenix when all the air conditioners around me went silent. Not a good thing. It was caused by lines in Oregon getting hot and sagging too close to a filbert tree (they can grow up to 2 feet a year) and tripping off. The cascade of automatic disconnections that followed left much of North America west of the Rockies in the dark for hours. It is a pretty common sort of blackout - far more common than from solar flares.
My family and I were driving home from a movie while listening to NY radio on July 13th of this year when we heard of a major blackout in the city. I had to do a double-take as it was indeed 42-years to the day since the 1977 blackout. History repeated itself -- this time due to a fire from what I heard.
My family was originally from Connecticut but they were gone by 1978, but they did live through the 1965 blackout. My uncle in particular told me that he had gone to his night class at Central Connecticut University when it went out and went home to find out the power was out at his house in Danbury also. I remember the blackout of 2003. I was watching one of the New York based news channels (I think it was Fox News) when they briefly went off the air. When it came back they said there had been a power outage and there was a blackout affecting the entire northeast. I called my uncle in Connecticut and asked him if the power was out there. He said “yeah, how’d you know!?” Of course then I told him what had happened!
I remember this event, it was very disconcerting. Lots of conspiracy theories about it. This is a phenomenal channel, my favorite... I suggest you consider the following topics in the future: The Robber Barons, in particular Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk. The stories surrounding their shenanigans are better than fiction. Also, Jekyll Island, and its role in creating the "Creature from Jekyll Island" which touches our lives even today.
Love your work, would like to see something about the early airships and the insane engineering that went into them. Since everyone only remembers the hindenburg!
Hi History Guy I was wondering if you have done one on the Halifax Explosion or the Frank Slide. I did a search on your page and couldn't find anything on them. Also as a former Video Cameraman I will telly you a rule is to always keep the eyes in the top 1/3 of the screen. Your eyes are in the middle and that is a way of belittling yourself and it also makes you look a bit creepy. I do love your channel and your topics and keep it up.
Honest I was 18 years old in 1977, living in San Antonio. We are a military town (5 air force bases and one army post) we didn't have anything in the way of criminal craziness. This blackout was amazing. I always wondered how do they turn the lights back on?
I was stationed aboard a US Navy destroyer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during 1977. At the time power went out, I was 60 miles upstate in Beacon NY visiting relatives with my father who flew in from Las Vegas for a wedding the week before. We were both ticketed to fly out of JFK to Las Vegas the next day. Dad was worried the flight was going to be canceled. I had to stop at the ship to get my pay before we flew out. Dad had to be back at work the following day was was very, very worried about making it on time. Fortunately, despite the power outage we were able to go the 60 miles to Brooklyn, get into the shipyard, get to the ship, get paid and made it to JFK on time. Even the flight was on time. BTW, in November 1965, I was living in Nelsonville, NY - 50 miles north of the city on the Hudson. I was listening to 77 WABC (Music Radio back then) when Dan Ingram's turntable stated slowing down and we eventually lost radio signal. WABC sent Dan to the transmitting tower in New Jersey that still had power to continue his broadcasting from there. It was exciting for a then 8 year old boy! Everything dark. Using flashlights and candles for light. Thank goodness our radio batteries were fresh!
I don't even bother waiting until the end to "Like" your videos. I already know it's gonna be good. I'd like to suggest to the viewers of this video to watch "James Burke - Connections S1E1 - The Trigger Effect". It is a VERY thought-provoking video illustrating our dependence on the technology that surrounds us. It uses "The North-Eastern U.S. Blackout of 1965", mentioned in this video, as its central case study. It has always been my favorite video by Mr. Burke, and among my favorite documentaries of all time.
Only slightly true. CMEs are trouble because they cause significant DC current to be induced in long east-west lines, particularly in eastern North America. Here in the Western US CMEs are not a significant concern; our long lines mostly run north-south. There is a corresponding vulnerability in the Southern hemisphere but I never looked into where it is. The problem is not with the lines, per se, but with transformers. DC makes the transformer cores susceptible to saturation, in which increased current is not opposed by increased magnetization of the core. The DC from the CME is not the damaging part, instead the DC makes the transformer temporarily unable to withstand normal AC power levels. All my substation protection experience is in the Southwest. We don't have any sensors for DC in the transformers because we don't need them. I do not know if susceptible lines monitor DC through the transformers or impending saturation (that is easier to monitor) but I would be surprised if they don't by now. I have noticed nearly all articles about the effect of CMEs on electric transmission systems have it almost entirely wrong.
5:36 what do you mean by "unwritten agreement between the police and looters". Please explain. Did the cops just let the looters loot as long as they didn't kill anyone?
Adam, What we did that night was being the Police Dept was cut down by Mayor Beam, We only arrested those we caught inside a business in the act of stealing. You have to remember that the City was DARK DARK DARK. There was no way we could have taken everyone into custody. There was just to much going on. Aside from the businesses being robbed we still had people being raped and assulted, So what we did if we seen you walking down the street with your hands full of stuff you took from breaking into a place we did not stop them we just arrested those in the act. We could have used the national guard and still would not have put a dent into what was happening. Then on top of that in the area we patroled and the areas close by we had the Son Of Sam The 44 cal killer on the loose and people calling because they thought that they seen a guy with a 44 cal Gun walking near their home. It was a Night of Terror, One that I will remember until the day I die, If there was a upside to that night it was that there was not that many murders, But alot of car accidents which we had to also respond too if there were injuries, Which sorry to say many of the accidents did have serious injuries. So there you have a very small part of what went on that night
my in-laws work for PG&E. Powering up large grids following a large area power loss is a monumental task. Perimeter activation in small areas is the start, then careful load-up in sequence. Otherwise your single plant will try to energize a much larger scale load! This is why it took a day to get everyone back up. Now PG&E deliberately shuts our power off!!!
Precisely true! Getting enough load on line that adding another generator won't destabilize what is already there is a touchy thing indeed. Add to that the careful phasing of the generator so it connects in step with the rest and it is a wearying task. What we need is a system like they had in I, Robot (with Will Smith) where the whole city could be powered up like somebody flipping switches. Magic would be great! The bulk electric power companies do a terrible job as a whole of educating the public how all this works. Everybody needs to know more about that than about factoring quadratic expressions.
The Broadway which had its stores looted was in Brooklyn not Manhattan. The situation in 1977 was far worse as the city was in the middle of a heat wave. The 1965 blackout happened on a November night that was warmer than normal and had a full moon to provide at least some light. As the narrator said the city's condition deteriorated drastically in the 12 years between the two events.
I was just about to start that year. I remember the news stories about it. It was a subject they talked about in civics/social studies and government classes that year. And the sign said anyone caught trespassing will be shot on sight!
You should do a story about the blackout of the Northeast Blackout in 2003. I drove to Auburn Hills Michigan from Chicago. It was amazing to see Detroit in the dark. Interesting situation that caused it too.
I'll never forget that blackout and the news reports after . The one I remember the most was when my father and I where watching the.national news and a reporter was interviewing a woman and she be mad . She said she looted a TV and when she came out of the store with it some guy came and he " Stole it from me , now that shit ain't right " !! My father and I just looked at each other in disgust. And from then on my opinion of NYC changed for the worst .
I grew up in Seattle, WA and saw the live news feeds on TV when the looting began. Can remember thinking how glad I lived on the other side of the country!
@@stevepettersen3283 "trouble" has always been around, and the latent crime you speak of migrating out your way in Seattle is nothing new in the least. If you asked people that experienced the "Red Summer of 1919" or "The Race Riots of 1968" that started April 4th when Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was was assassinated, and went through summer till the... "protest activities" around the Democratic National Convention that started August 23, 1968... Some kind of trouble is regularly brewing up in a country as unsettled and tumultuous as ours.
I recall the '65 Blackout very clearly, as my family had relatives that lived in Brooklyn and they were all joking about the event, at the time. I find it quite odd that I don't recall any news print nor have any memories of family on the phone, as would be the norm, surrounding the '77 Blackout. Must not have been paying attention then, cause I just graduated high school and was focused on girls and hang gliding and snorkeling for my food, in no particular order.
I was 14 and we lived in the Bronx. There wasn't any looting in my neighborhood. When people realized it was the whole city, people dragged couches out into the streets and it turned into a block party. Crime in NYC was far worse in the 70s and 80s than now, or any other time. Things started getting better during the economic boom of the 90s. Poverty and despair breed crime and drug addiction.
@kragsevenThe early 60's had better morals than the late 60's. Yes, I was there. I think our morals are worse today. I am a Christian, but I am not a racist, nor am I a liberal, socialist, or communist. What type of beliefs do you hold that would make you think that most Christians would condone lynching a person, dragging them behind a truck, or assassination? Before the Civil War, the North was far more racist than the Christian South. Some Northern states had passed amendments to their Constitutions preventing blacks from living in their state. Most of the racialism in the South developed after the Civil War because of the antagonistic policies of the Radical Republicans (communists) who dominated Congress. Out of the Civil War came large monopolistic corporations, a big and growing federal government, a growing federal debt, the continual erosion of our Constitutional freedoms, and the deterioration of our morals. Christianity was not forced into our Constitution or our government. When our Constitution was instituted, almost every American was a Christian and so were the delegates that wrote the document. We have Constitutional freedoms because of Christians not in spite of Christians. The way you refer to Christians, it seems as if you think they are a plague. Granted there are Christians who are intolerant and narrow-minded. Those type of Christians elevate their doctrine over love; it makes them hypocritical at best and dangerous at worst. Truthfully, that statement can be applied to any religion or political belief not just Christianity. There are a lot of examples throughout history of people operating under the Christian banner (who may or may not have been real Christians) who thought their doctrine was so important that they justified murder and torture. But if you think they were bad, they run a distant second to the Satanists and atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or Idi Amin for example. One thing is sure, when the Utopians (globalists) are in power, expect tyranny. Most of the tyranny in our government and culture are a result of the Utopians, not Christians.
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I had an uncle who was working late at a factory that night. He was contracted to repair a very large electric motor and was working after the factory was shut down. When he was done with his repairs he turned on the motor and ALL the lights in the factory went out. He couldn't locate the night watchman, so he left the factory to drive home and noticed the lights were out on the whole block, and as he drove away he noticed the lights were out all over the city. He thought he had caused the whole blackout.
Great story!
That is so funny!
Yes, they are still looking for him. lol
Bet he had an, "Oh My God! What have I done?"moment.
That is such a good story. As an electrician he knew that making a mistake could blow out circuits for the factory or possibly the whole block but oh my God the whole fucking City that is just hilarious
I had an interesting seat for the blackout. My dad was stationed at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island. I had just finished 5th grade. My friends and older brother were out and about late that evening, hanging out under the Verrazzano Bridge looking over the entrance to the bay. We were sitting on a rock wall that gave us a great view of the whole city. Then, rather unexpectedly, large square sections of the city started going black, one after another until even our own area went black. We had never experienced anything like this but knew immediately this was something significant. Being on a military base, we weren't really all that worried about riots or looters. There were family friends that had been in Manhattan that evening for a play at some theater and getting home without the subways proved to be a challenge for them. I remember the heat, even though having spent my early years growing up in Central Texas high heat was nothing new to me, but the humidity... THAT was different!! We eventually made our way home in the dark, braving a short cut on a road that took us past one of the old abandoned concrete bunkers that were all over the base and rumored to be haunted, which every kid our age took serious! It was a relief to be home... almost as much of a relief as when the power came back on and the A/C kicked on again.
We were sitting directly under the bridge at the top of the treeline on the far shore of this image,
asliceofbrooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/unnamed-2.jpg
We watched MANY ships come and go from that vantage, including the Queen Mary II.
Ft. Wadsworth was actually a collection of several older forts. It and Ft. Hamilton were used for guarding the entrance to the bay. They used disappearing guns that dropped out of sight after firing. The concrete bunkers were huge and right behind our home. Even though they were strictly off limits, kids were kids and we played all over them but generally stayed out of the deeper tunnels. Ft. Wadsworth is now some kind of National Park, but I think Hamilton might still be active. It would be really cool to see some videos about these two forts and those that came before them on the same spots as well as the guns themselves.
The winter of 76/77 also merits an episode as it was one of the hardest winters in many many years. The bay froze. Reckless kids that we were, we jumped out on to the broken ice chunks floating in the water after the breakers came through to open up the bay, never realizing that one slip would have meant falling between the chunks of ice with little chance of climbing back out of the water. That winter was enough to convince me I did not want to spend winters further North than Dallas. Anything beyond that I consider the Great White North, fun to visit in summer, but to be avoided in winter ;-)
Thanks for the story and for including the picture!
Wow so interesting life experience! I wasn’t even born then
As someone who grew up in Chicago and now lives in Central Florida, I can agree. Chicago in the "not winter" months is a great place to visit, sight see, tour, experience and enjoy, but... my 53 year old body has little tolerance for temperatures below freezing (which I got to experience on my last visit home with my wife, just before Halloween of 2016 - We got to see snow flurries and shiver while waiting for the bus to take my wife to see the neighborhood where I had been born and spent my first 13 years. good times man, good times). If I only lived closer to the beaches, I might say Florida is truly lovely, but man the super humid heat from nearly 8 months of "summer" can really get to you...
I was a musician living on Bleecker St in the Village. We spent the night outside on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker, in front of Johnny's T Shirt City. He had a bonfire of candles on the corner. It was Goti's neighborhood, so we were like children at a camp out and had no idea at the time why Greenwich Village was so safe.
I remember both blackouts. The first was fun. We went up on the roof and enjoyed the sight of a black night. My parents spoke of black out drills during WWII. 1977 was another story. We closed the shades, had the doors locked, went down into the basement with flashlights, food, water and a radio. It's one of the few times Dad loaded his gun because of danger from humans. We knew people were going berserk on Jamaica Blvd. Our immediate neighborhood thankfully remained fairly untouched. Some cars on the street were stolen, vandalized, but ours was alright locked in the garage. The third blackout in 2003 I missed entirely, not even finding out about it until five days later. I was on a canoe trip in the Adirondacks with two other adults and twelve teenagers! No power problems where we were!
lol, well off person.
im very close to jamaica ave. know it well
In 2003 people had a more public cooperative spirit, with traffic lights out the traffic flowed more smoothly as folks were courteous. And not as much disorder as in '77.
I was living in E. Lansing Mi during the 2003 blackout. It started with my gf and I thinking it was just our house so, let's get take-out. Leave the house and the first intersection is out. So on etc. until we realized eventually it was the whole east side of the country, never forget that. Definitely not violent. We ended up having a candle light dinner once the power went out where we were eating.
Thanks. Remember it well. I had just moved to NYC and lived in an apartment on Second Avenue in the East Seventies. I was resting in bed with the room lights off. Suddenly, the air conditioner stopped running and I heard a commotion on the street. I went to the window and saw only the lights of the traffic and the silhouettes of buildings. People seemed almost in a festive mood, perhaps because of the novelty. That dissipated fast. Fortunately, I lived in a relatively safe neighborhood and a secure building so it didn't occur to me to be concerned about security, but it got really hot in my apartment and there was no water. I didn't even think of going to work the next day. That would have involved going down 26 floors, getting to Wall Street, somehow, and going up the stairs to my office on the 52nd floor. NYC was the pits in the late '70s.
onanism. cool.
They talk about the number of people killed in events like this, but a large spike in births in April, 1978 shows that people were doing more than dying.
Eric Taylor reminds me of the November snowstorm of 2014 we had here, 9 months later, there was a large spike in births around here haha
Yeah, but what else are you going to do if you and your partner don't have TV or internet? :D
Yes they had no TV, but people did not have computers or internet in 1977. It would be almost 20 years later that people starting getting internet access.
I don't know?? I'll ask my 9 brothers and sisters..
@@Mark-ce3gp hahaha
I remember the black out. I was 13 years old. My family and I were driving from Long Island to Columbus Ohio and had left LI at night in order to avoid the heavy City daytime traffic. We were on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway traveling westbound. Normally, Manhattan gleamed over the roadway, it loomed like a giant advertisement for something sophisticated and glamorous. That night was vivid in my memory as the City was dark. We heard on the radio as we drove that whole area was without power and there was a lot of criminal behavior underway. It seemed so surreal and has never left my memory. It was a very hot night. My uncle was driving. He had a 75 Eldorado and we cranked the AC while we past the City. That night did have a huge impact on the City. It changed the City. In some ways a lot of the older City vanished after that. It certainly was a catalyst for change. Thank you THG. You brought back a moment in time for me that seems almost like a dream to me all these years later. I don't know how you choose your subjects but you certainly run the full gamut of subjects!
In my electrical engineering classes, we were taught that in 1977, many of smaller power plants in the area couldn't power up without an existing 'powered up' grid to join. As a result, power had to be restored working inwards from the areas that still had power, rather than being brought up in sections. That situation has now changed.
Karl Fimm. Very interesting! So smaller plants connected to grid couldn't power up without overloading themselves?
It may be similar to how a grid-tie inverter for wind or solar works.
They sync their output to the grid so without an external sine wave to phase-align to they won't transfer current.
The US electrical grid is not hardened against an
EMP (natural or otherwise) or sabotage despite
several regional blackouts and the events of 9/11.
In Hawaii in hurricane Iwa they had the same problem on Kauai. Had to bring over a nuclear sub and use its power to restart the island grid.
@@joedellinger9437 I came here to post that same story! The sub jump started the island...
Yes I remember that Blackout very well. I was a police officer in Bay Ridge Brooklyn and my Father was the Vice President of Con Edison. The crime rate was unreal, Me and and my partner had to work for 36 hours straight. The two of us arrested 35 people in that span. My father Took off the tie and went and worked in the field which many of the higher ups did. T.H.G. You did a great job on this video.
Must’ve been tough being a cop at that time
The 35 people you arrested...mostly white or black? if its historic moment let it be accurate.
I was there. I was an Airfreight truck driver in 1977. I remember being on the interstate driving back from Kennedy airport and it was almost impossible to tell where you were. Many of the signs relied on electric light to be visible. I also remember watching the water from firefighters (burning buildings above) running down the cliffs onto the Cross Bronx Expressway as I was on my way to the George Washington Bridge.
I'm so old I remember this! Another great video! I'm still catching up on a few of your video's since I didn't discover them until early 2020. History is timeless! Thank you!
Hey! It wasn’t THAT long ago!! lol
I remember both the 65 and 77 blackouts very well. At the time of the 77 blackout I was in my room at home studying for a college course while listening to a Barry White record. I recall that the power didn't just go out immediately -- it was a slow process which took about a minute or so. The first thing I noticed was Barry White's singing going from his normal, smooth baritone voice to a slow, distorted warble. At the same time the lights started going slowly dim. Then after a minute everything went dark. Two things immediately happened: 1. I initially thought I had passed away because it was pitch black. 2. I have to preface this with the fact that I am a lifelong geek, nerd, etc. That being said, I was notorious for being the source of blown fuses in the house because of my electronic experiments and whatnot. Which, at the time of the blackout, my dad who was taking a bath at the time started screaming at me about blowing another fuse. It was my dad's screaming at me about the fuse which made me realize that I was not dead. To this day, however, I think he still blames me for the blackout occurring...hahahahaha. On a more serious note, our neighborhood remained relatively calm during the event -- it was only when the lights came back on did we find out about the other areas of NYC that had suffered.
Our utility (Wisconsin Power & Light) used to put out flyers in your bill every once and a while on what to do in a power failure. Unplug any appliances in your house to protect them from low voltage/and or spikes, obviously electronics are VERY sensitive to damage. Turn your lights off, yet leave one light on in say your kitchen or bathroom. When the power comes back on watch this light, if it does not flicker or flash and stays at full brightness for a couple of minutes then you can slowly turn your lights back on and plug in your appliances one at a time. This way you can help avoid a power surge that can cause the grid to collapse again.
I lived in the Bronx during that time. I was only 10 at the time, but I remember the crimes, the heat wave, the Son of Sam murders, etc. I didn't remember the cause of the blackout but it seemed longer than 25 hours, probably because of the heat. Thanks for posting this, you did a great job explaining it!
Like nearly all blackouts it was the result of overloading transmission lines. Electric grids are delicate balancing acts - every minute of every day the generation must equal loss plus load. If the load suddenly drops from a line tripping off, the system voltage will rise to damaging levels and the system frequency will rise unless generation is shut down. If too much generation is shut down, the voltage and frequency drop; if the frequency is out of limits. When large areas are affected initially the service can't be recovered because the frequency can't be synchronized with the wider world; everything has to be brought down to zero in the affected area, the system has to be sectionalized by opening switches, and it has to be restored but by bit. In a city the size of New York that is a very time consuming project... 25 hours is pretty fast for that.
I saw a mini series on ESPN about this. I blame John Turturro.
The Black Out of 1965! What a year that was for me. I was caught in the black out taking a shower after wrestling practice and thought only that the power had failed in the school, but on going outside we saw that all the lights were out everywhere. That winter the blizzard of 1966 took place and once again I was at wrestling practice and trudged home through deepening snow. I remember my brother was sick and I tried to do his paper route, but the snow drifts were too high and I couldn't deliver all of his papers. He would get an award for never missing a school day in 4 years because he was sick only when the school had been closed!
That one was big league! Caused by a faulty protection circuit around Niagara Falls, IIRC, it did the usual cascade thing and took everything down over an impressive part of NE US and into Canada.
Haystacks Calhoun told the same story during an MSG promo in 1972. I wonder who's plagiarizing whom?
I was there in 1965 and 1977 and remember them both. I was 10 in '65. It was neat watching the darkness to the west from the attic of our Queens home where earlier had been the city skyline. We burned candles and since our gas stove still worked, and there was food in the pantry, the blackout did not cause a lot of difficulty. In '77, even though I was just out of college, my mother was much more fearful and forbade us from going outside. For her sake I complied and watched over my siblings. An old Japanese transistor radio provided the latest news, but finding fresh batteries was a problem. Blackouts are like assassinations and space shuttle explosions - you remember them clearly many decades later.
I remember this well. The storms that afternoon and through out that evening were severe and pretty scary.
I was 16 and staying in Brooklyn with a cousin. We just bought the new Fleetwood Mac rumors album and we're listening to it when the power went out. Never forget that night.
We lived in Connecticut then, stationed out there by the US Navy. It was a time when my then husband was at sea, or on duty, i don’t recall, but he wasn’t there in our upstairs apartment in Norwich. I recall sitting on the Deacons Bench at the end of the hall, in front of a window overlooking main street. I had lit a candle and read by its light, waiting for the lights to come back, but content with the candle light, and a book. Norwich was a quiet little city that night, as always.
I was in Brooklyn for all the blackouts. The Broadway you mention is the one that runs through Brooklyn. That stretch of road in Bushwick and ENY were hit hardest by looting and arson.
I lived on West 70th Street near Broadway in 1977. I remember how eerie it was. Broadway was empty and the dark buildings were scary. My husband and I walked a couple of blocks...then hunkered down in our dark apartment. We were young, and all of it - the heat, the crime, the city's fiscal problems - didn't affect us very much.
There was another Blackout in August 2003. I was working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and had to walk home - but it was afternoon, so no problem. By then we had lived through 9/11 in Manhattan, so a Blackout that affected the entire Northeast and part of Canada - no problem...
It's only in more recent years that I've come to appreciate how fragile our national power grid is. This is truly scary.
Your channel is so rightly titled. This is history worth remembering. I was 13 when this happened I lived in Philadelphia down the road from New York the news coverage news people had big big balls back then cuz they were out in the middle of it you won't believe some of the shots they came off the TV
I looked up the origin of the phrase "with bells on" and my inner monolog and i havent seen one of your videos for over a month.
You are now the voice of history in my head.
I wonder how many other people hear it too, if they do i think that deserves to be remembered 😄
Thank you for covering the great Black Out of 1977, Lance. If anyone is interested there is a VH1 documentary that explains the economic situation in NYC and the effects of this black out on the birth of hip hop, called _'NY77 : The Coolest Year In Hell'_
Wow I remember that I was just a young kid but when the lights went out I thought it was really cool something out of the norm we went around the corner cuz we heard a lot of sirens and commotion and we saw stores being looted crowds cops chasing people what a night.
In 1977, I was an engineer working for The Singer Company, Link Division. I had just been reassigned to work on a support contract to upgrade and enhance a nuclear power plant simulator at Con Edison's Indian Point Power Station. Indian point was the training center for Con Ed and it also supported other utilities for training of the operation of nuclear power plants. It was also where two nuclear power generating plants were located that provided power to New York City.
The Buchanan substation was nearby Indian point and it was where the lighting strikes took down the power to the city. I had the opportunity to see first hand how the dedicated engineers and management of Con Ed went into action to help get Indian Point back on the grid and power flowing to New York City again. Everyone always talks about the disaster that this caused, but few people mention the dedicated people of Con Ed who worked day and night to get the power flowing again.
Subbed! I don't clearly remember the 77 event but I was 11 in 65 and had to complete my newspaper deliveries in multiple 3 story walk up apartment blocks in east Toronto. No emergency lighting in those days!
That is all true, but was it also a factor that people are less likely to loot in the cold of November 65 and more likely to in the heat of July 77
patdbean Good point.
Yes! 👍👍It's not like "looting" was invented in the 70's, Like it was something that was "just NOT done" by the "better" folk in '65..Hell, The Watts riots happened MONTHS BEFORE the '65 NYC blackout! And November in New York City is a BIT chillier than August in Los Angeles! 🤷♂️
Also when the blackout hit, Richard Donner was filming outdoor scenes downtown for Superman/Superman II.
We lose power for days every time we get hit by a hurricane. I'm out of power now in fact and its been about 32 hours, no crisis here...
same here on the Gulf Coast .
Your channel is truly enriching and a welcome refreshment from the noise YT can create. Thank you, sir.
Amazing. Great story telling and research once again. Thanks.
Although too young to remember the blackout of 1964. It was repeated again 2003. Not just New York city but the whole state, parts of Ohio and Southern Ontario. That is history worth remembering.
History Guy Your history is very accurate when it comes to the nuclear disasters we almost had. I've read "Command and Control" a book you have also cited in your podcasts and you do stay true with other credible historians. Please continue your good work. I've learned a lot. I was never interested in history that much as a young man, but as I get older I've learned to love it. It's also important that our posterity have it accurately preserved. You have helped in this endeavor. IMHO.
The History Guy has single-handedly changed my outlook on nuclear threat. Well, I had watched one of his episodes and soon after that watched the old Twilight Zone episode, "The Old Man in the Cave" set in a post nuclear apocalyptic world. I wondered, "After a nuclear exchange, who would say to themselves 'I'm glad we did that?' " For 75 years we have not found a practical use for nuclear weapons and have demonstrated the tremendous practical value of precision conventional munitions. MAD won't protect us from accidents like the Norwegian Rocket Incident.
I only ask one thing of Death: that I not die as a result of doing something stupid. I recommend that philosophy to the nuclear powers of the world. Enough already.
If you listen to the first 3 minutes and 37 seconds where he gets to the word staggering 12%, you realize in 2021 we're doing it all over again without the power outage!
I've always believed that what this outage really revealed was that generating sources were too far from the loads they were supplying. So when things started going south, there was quickly a cascade as the transmission lines couldn't handle the power being shunted over them. This left many various generating facilities isolated and made it difficult to restore services. It basically had to be a cold start-up and that can take a LONG time!
I was there that night. The restaurant we were eating in when the lights went out offered us free ice cream, as they would have to throw it away anyway, and they were unable to cook us anything for dinner. After we left the restaurant, and attempted to drive back to our hotel, I watched the looting up close: The looters drove trucks up to the gates over store windows, chained the gates to the back of their trucks, and drove away, taking the security gates with them. Then the looters would run in, and carry away the merchandise. The infamous "Tombs" prison was re-opened that night - and crammed with wall-to-wall prisoners, as fast as the police could catch them. A family friend had grown up in the city, and spent the night finding bewildered New Yorkers who had never traveled home from work overland - they only knew the subway routes. He spent the entire night helping people figure out where home was! I remember the next day, the temperature was 102 when the power came back on.
Fantastic channel, thank you for bringing history alive!
Good work!! I was over a year old when this blackout happened!
I was a teen when that happened, we lived in queens and we all had a blast! Nothing bad happened in our neighborhood.
anybody who wants to know more about the blackout: plug "1977 coolest year in hell" into the search line
while the part about the blackout itself is from about 40 to 55 minute marks, the entire hour & 23 minutes of it does a really good job explaining nyc life then from the standpoints of punk, disco, and yes, hiphop/rap music.
Yep. This is a good point and thank you for mentioning that VH1 / Mtv documentary. Lance alludes to it in this video, talking about Grandmaster Cas (of The Cold Crush Brothers) at 6:37
I highly recommend the other documentary for anyone wanting a further look into the economic situation in New York City around this time, and this blackout's effect on the birth of hip hop. _"NY77 : The Coolest Year In Hell'_ tells the story in a fun and entertaining way.
😊
The idea of living in an urban area appeals to me about as much as the idea of putting out one of my eyes with a sharp stick.
Quite appealing
I like living right on the edge of a small town. One minute's walk from my front door I can be in the countryside; 20 minutes walk in the other direction I can get to a railway station from where a train will get me to central London in 90 minutes.
One of the best channels on UA-cam.
So glad i found your channel ❤!!!!
I know this is an older video, but two things... I'm from Brooklyn and the heatwave and blackout of 1977, and the insane blizzard of 1978 are some of my earliest memories.
Also, I'm surprised that in the few history based channels I follow, I don't remember seeing anything on Ed Koch. Maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker, but I think Hizzoner is definitely a character worth remembering. An interesting bit there.. I am a fan of MASH and back in the day when we first got a VCR I recorded MASH every day and I watched those tapes until they wore our. I kept one tape specifically for one of the commercials. It was a reelection video for Ed Koch and next to Koch, very prominently was Donald Manes, who committed suicide while under suspicion of corruption. If I remember correctly that scandal hurt Koch pretty badly. I think this is a big event for New Yorkers of a certain age.
Thanks for the education and making me a tad smarter. At the very least, a better conversationist.
Strange coincidence that this video comes up on my recommendation a day after watching the Amazon movie Wonderstruck which is set in 1977 during the heatwave and the movie ends with the blackout. Myself being born in the mid 80s I didn't know about these events before now. Great video!
That's google for you! No privacy
In 1977 I was visiting my grandparents in Antlers, Oklahoma. I learned about the blackout watching television.
And my daughter was born 8/77. I remember almost that whole month by heart.
The History Guy videos are awesome.............they are straight to the point and the topics are sometimes so obscure that they are just ignored in the regular study of history. I see tons of history videos on UA-cam but The History Guy is #1..........and I'm not sure how he does it but he even makes Bow Ties cool!!
Don’t forget about the Great Northeastern Blackout of 2003. I was in NYC at the time and the blackout was an extraordinary unforgettable experience. The 9th largest blackout by population world wide. More recent history perhaps, but very much worthy of remembrance.
Graduated in '77. Remember this well, way down in Arkansas.
I had friends and acquaintances who lived in NYC. They remarked during 65 & 66, "New York was a nice kind of dirty."
A few years later, "NYC is just dirty, dirty." I had not thought about the economy. All these years, I remembered these remarks.
Thank you for helping me understand what had happened.
,
Thanks love your shows
A lesson not heeded, as NY and the whole Northeast went dark again in 2003...
As for the City of NY, growing up in SW Connecticut in the 1980's, NYC was a CRAZY place. Same problem hit many northeast cities in the 1970's and 80's. Bridgeport CT went from a manufacturing center to a deeply troubled city, and now, like NYC is clawing its way back.
Stephen Britton. Hmm. I think some lessons were well learned, but pushing through changes to power grid structure, management and oversight had been a lifelong career for many people well before this. The alarm bell had been rung, but by no one with lobbying power or deep pockets.
shot forshot, I will not disagree with that. All I know was it was awfully dark that night in 2003!
@@shotforshot5983 True, and for dense population areas it is a major challenge.
You forgot about the man called Moses that destroyed neighborhoods to build highways that almost all New Yorkers hate.
Subscribed. I love history, it's a window to the future.
I was about ten year old then and I remember that summer well! Great video!👍
I was in a bowling alley when the lights went out. Hard time to find my shoes.
Anyway, I lived thru 3 black outs.in NYC so far. I expect to see another sooner than later.
When I worked for an electric utility I did a presentation on blackouts for our department (IT field support). Wikipedia made it easy. The big picture: 2 of them in the '60s, 4 in the '70s, 6 in the '80s, 6 in the '90s, 10 in the '00s, 10 in the '10s. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry watchdog, estimates it will cost about half a trillion dollars to bring the US transmission infrastructure up to modern standards.
So, yes... sooner than later.
Steal any balls or just pins?
Worth the reminder.
My parents had just moved to the Lower East Side a week before this. They lived across from Tompkins Square park. They said it was wild.
I'd like to see a piece on the first blackout. On 9 November 1965, at 5:27 pm, I was at Columbus Circle with friends and we could see the lights going out block by block, coming toward us. The city was calm and friendly, like the world's biggest block party. There were jokes about all the people stuck on escalators. I had a battery powered tape recorder and radio and recorded some of the on-air coverage. Fifty-eight years ago, I wonder if I still have it somewhere.
Look for it, thats a treasure lol
The blackout was 54 years ago
one good solar flare and good bye power grid, across the planet.
Ya why don't they fix that I heard it would't be that expensive and it is fixable,it would provide ready jobs, but they sit and do nothing.
@@michaelsmith1094
The effect's of an earth directed CME are charged particles and energetic X-rays.
The lightning was the ionosphere discharging thru the storm. But electricity flows through earth too.
If the solar flare occurs inside a coronal hole opening, and adjacent to where earth's magnetic connection happens to be at the time? It can be a problem within 8 minutes of the flare, CME or no!
Earth's global electric circuit's ability to process the trillions of terrawatts of energy flowing, can be exceeded.
Electricity of varying voltages, is induced into conductors, like the really big power lines, and anything else metallic and inadequately insulated btw.
Point is, you can't adequately insulate transmission lines. You must sever the path of the current and redirect it. You have to kill the power to save it and they have technology and plans to try
But when a big CME hits our magnetosphere?
The Van Allen belts are compressed into the ionosphere, as the magnetosphere is overwhelmed and it's structure is deformed.
Earth is, for all intents and purposes, a capacitor that leaks and discharges electrical energy from the sun. And we, like birds on a wire, are oblivious to the potential of the energy flowing beneath our feet.
Today a Carrington Event sized, earth facing X flare, or more likely, series of big M and bigger X flares, with CMEs to match?
That could wreak serious havoc. Safeguards aren't cheap, and somebody's gotta make the call to shut down everything, before the currents are induced.
Shit happens. It'll suck. We'll deal with it or our kids will or theirs. For now? There's beer and paychecks 👍
That is a very popular myth. Solar flares (Coronal Mass Ejections) release hordes of charged particles that are herded by Earth's magnetic field to impact regions of the Earth hundreds of miles apart. That produces DC currents in transmission lines that connect the regions, and those DC currents can saturate the cores of the large power transformers, reducing the amount of power the transformers can carry without destroying themselves. There is nothing sudden about this - it ramps up over a period of several minutes or hours. During that time, when a risk is identified, opening the breakers on the vulnerable lines prevents damage.
Only a few regions of the planet are vulnerable; we don't even consider the problem here in the US Southwest.
(Retired last year from 34 years field support in a Fortune 100 electric utility - I did a report on this a few years ago.)
@@michaelsmith1094 It is not a labor issue, just equipment on vulnerable lines. The changes would be minor; programming of the existing protective relaying equipment to watch for the current spikes that are produced by core saturation. That would trip the line and prevent expensive transformer damage. In my third of a century in an electric utility in the Southwest we went through half a dozen events and we didn't have a whimper.
@@TheScmtnrider Not quite that way. The currents induced by CMEs are not damaging in themselves; they interfere with the ability of transformers to handle their rated currents. It is no big deal to open the breakers on vulnerable transmission lines. Were you affected by the flares in 1972, 1989, 2000, 2003, or 2006?
In summer 1996 I was relaxing by the pool in Phoenix when all the air conditioners around me went silent. Not a good thing. It was caused by lines in Oregon getting hot and sagging too close to a filbert tree (they can grow up to 2 feet a year) and tripping off. The cascade of automatic disconnections that followed left much of North America west of the Rockies in the dark for hours. It is a pretty common sort of blackout - far more common than from solar flares.
My dad still talks about this... He was on his way home from work..
My family and I were driving home from a movie while listening to NY radio on July 13th of this year when we heard of a major blackout in the city. I had to do a double-take as it was indeed 42-years to the day since the 1977 blackout. History repeated itself -- this time due to a fire from what I heard.
My family was originally from Connecticut but they were gone by 1978, but they did live through the 1965 blackout. My uncle in particular told me that he had gone to his night class at Central Connecticut University when it went out and went home to find out the power was out at his house in Danbury also. I remember the blackout of 2003. I was watching one of the New York based news channels (I think it was Fox News) when they briefly went off the air. When it came back they said there had been a power outage and there was a blackout affecting the entire northeast. I called my uncle in Connecticut and asked him if the power was out there. He said “yeah, how’d you know!?” Of course then I told him what had happened!
I remember this event, it was very disconcerting. Lots of conspiracy theories about it. This is a phenomenal channel, my favorite... I suggest you consider the following topics in the future: The Robber Barons, in particular Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk. The stories surrounding their shenanigans are better than fiction. Also, Jekyll Island, and its role in creating the "Creature from Jekyll Island" which touches our lives even today.
I remember my mom telling me about the blackout in NYC in the sixties, that there was a mini baby boom 9 months LATER
Thank you!
Candles, are my favorite
Love your work, would like to see something about the early airships and the insane engineering that went into them. Since everyone only remembers the hindenburg!
Some discussion of that here: ua-cam.com/video/vJMwIar7FN0/v-deo.html
The History Guy: Five Minutes of History awesome
Magnús Þór
Oh the humanity! I felt very bad for that guy.
I was in NYC for this memorable event. Working at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center as a young nurse. Never forget it.
Great channel, glad I found it.
Hi History Guy I was wondering if you have done one on the Halifax Explosion or the Frank Slide. I did a search on your page and couldn't find anything on them.
Also as a former Video Cameraman I will telly you a rule is to always keep the eyes in the top 1/3 of the screen. Your eyes are in the middle and that is a way of belittling yourself and it also makes you look a bit creepy.
I do love your channel and your topics and keep it up.
I remember the blackout. I was 17 years old and living in westchester County New York.
Honest I was 18 years old in 1977, living in San Antonio. We are a military town (5 air force bases and one army post) we didn't have anything in the way of criminal craziness. This blackout was amazing. I always wondered how do they turn the lights back on?
I was stationed aboard a US Navy destroyer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during 1977. At the time power went out, I was 60 miles upstate in Beacon NY visiting relatives with my father who flew in from Las Vegas for a wedding the week before. We were both ticketed to fly out of JFK to Las Vegas the next day. Dad was worried the flight was going to be canceled. I had to stop at the ship to get my pay before we flew out. Dad had to be back at work the following day was was very, very worried about making it on time. Fortunately, despite the power outage we were able to go the 60 miles to Brooklyn, get into the shipyard, get to the ship, get paid and made it to JFK on time. Even the flight was on time. BTW, in November 1965, I was living in Nelsonville, NY - 50 miles north of the city on the Hudson. I was listening to 77 WABC (Music Radio back then) when Dan Ingram's turntable stated slowing down and we eventually lost radio signal. WABC sent Dan to the transmitting tower in New Jersey that still had power to continue his broadcasting from there. It was exciting for a then 8 year old boy! Everything dark. Using flashlights and candles for light. Thank goodness our radio batteries were fresh!
I remember that as a kid ,... in CT.
I also am so OLD I recall! Too!!!
This reminds me of the movie, "Dog day afternoon." New York City is a bullet waiting for a forehead to get in it's way.
I don't even bother waiting until the end to "Like" your videos. I already know it's gonna be good.
I'd like to suggest to the viewers of this video to watch "James Burke - Connections S1E1 - The Trigger Effect".
It is a VERY thought-provoking video illustrating our dependence on the technology that surrounds us. It uses "The North-Eastern U.S. Blackout of 1965", mentioned in this video, as its central case study. It has always been my favorite video by Mr. Burke, and among my favorite documentaries of all time.
i love your videos! however im intrigued by your collection of hats. how about a short video explaining them?
ua-cam.com/play/PLSnt4mJGJfGhaqf9Nk_fkzRlQNrsB2iMb.html
Good job of looking on the bright side.
All big cities are just one good CME event from coming unglued.
Piffle
I was so proud of my city when it was hit with the 1989 earthquake. San Francisco, as usual, turned it into a party...
Only slightly true. CMEs are trouble because they cause significant DC current to be induced in long east-west lines, particularly in eastern North America. Here in the Western US CMEs are not a significant concern; our long lines mostly run north-south. There is a corresponding vulnerability in the Southern hemisphere but I never looked into where it is.
The problem is not with the lines, per se, but with transformers. DC makes the transformer cores susceptible to saturation, in which increased current is not opposed by increased magnetization of the core. The DC from the CME is not the damaging part, instead the DC makes the transformer temporarily unable to withstand normal AC power levels.
All my substation protection experience is in the Southwest. We don't have any sensors for DC in the transformers because we don't need them. I do not know if susceptible lines monitor DC through the transformers or impending saturation (that is easier to monitor) but I would be surprised if they don't by now.
I have noticed nearly all articles about the effect of CMEs on electric transmission systems have it almost entirely wrong.
5:36 what do you mean by "unwritten agreement between the police and looters". Please explain. Did the cops just let the looters loot as long as they didn't kill anyone?
Adam, What we did that night was being the Police Dept was cut down by Mayor Beam, We only arrested those we caught inside a business in the act of stealing. You have to remember that the City was DARK DARK DARK. There was no way we could have taken everyone into custody. There was just to much going on. Aside from the businesses being robbed we still had people being raped and assulted, So what we did if we seen you walking down the street with your hands full of stuff you took from breaking into a place we did not stop them we just arrested those in the act. We could have used the national guard and still would not have put a dent into what was happening. Then on top of that in the area we patroled and the areas close by we had the Son Of Sam The 44 cal killer on the loose and people calling because they thought that they seen a guy with a 44 cal Gun walking near their home. It was a Night of Terror, One that I will remember until the day I die, If there was a upside to that night it was that there was not that many murders, But alot of car accidents which we had to also respond too if there were injuries, Which sorry to say many of the accidents did have serious injuries. So there you have a very small part of what went on that night
@@toiletpaper4 People who quote Game of Thrones need to shampoo my crotch.
@@toiletpaper4.. LOL
@@toiletpaper4 This franchise didn't age well.
Neither did Melisandre's tits.
my in-laws work for PG&E. Powering up large grids following a large area power loss is a monumental task. Perimeter activation in small areas is the start, then careful load-up in sequence. Otherwise your single plant will try to energize a much larger scale load! This is why it took a day to get everyone back up. Now PG&E deliberately shuts our power off!!!
Precisely true! Getting enough load on line that adding another generator won't destabilize what is already there is a touchy thing indeed. Add to that the careful phasing of the generator so it connects in step with the rest and it is a wearying task. What we need is a system like they had in I, Robot (with Will Smith) where the whole city could be powered up like somebody flipping switches.
Magic would be great!
The bulk electric power companies do a terrible job as a whole of educating the public how all this works. Everybody needs to know more about that than about factoring quadratic expressions.
Hi, You need an NYPD hat in the background for this video. LOL.
I was fortunate to , experience the BLACKOUT of 77 in Jackson heights queens , the remainder of my youth
Johnny Carson commented on all the people stuck in elevators and expected in 9 months there would be a flood of babies born named 'Otis'.
Would you elaborate on the "unwritten agreement between the police and looters", which resulted in only 2 deaths? Was looting overlooked?
Thank you I enjoy your videos. I'd never heard of this blackout
The Broadway which had its stores looted was in Brooklyn not Manhattan. The situation in 1977 was far worse as the city was in the middle of a heat wave. The 1965 blackout happened on a November night that was warmer than normal and had a full moon to provide at least some light. As the narrator said the city's condition deteriorated drastically in the 12 years between the two events.
I was just about to start that year. I remember the news stories about it. It was a subject they talked about in civics/social studies and government classes that year. And the sign said anyone caught trespassing will be shot on sight!
You should do a story about the blackout of the Northeast Blackout in 2003. I drove to Auburn Hills Michigan from Chicago. It was amazing to see Detroit in the dark. Interesting situation that caused it too.
I lived through it! What a summer that was!
I'll never forget that blackout and the news reports after . The one I remember the most was when my father and I where watching the.national news and a reporter was interviewing a woman and she be mad . She said she looted a TV and when she came out of the store with it some guy came and he " Stole it from me , now that shit ain't right " !! My father and I just looked at each other in disgust.
And from then on my opinion of NYC changed for the worst .
I grew up in Seattle, WA and saw the live news feeds on TV when the looting began. Can remember thinking how glad I lived on the other side of the country!
@Biggiebaby Yes and no. Am disappointed as to how much trouble has migrated out here too.
@@stevepettersen3283 "trouble" has always been around, and the latent crime you speak of migrating out your way in Seattle is nothing new in the least. If you asked people that experienced the "Red Summer of 1919" or "The Race Riots of 1968" that started April 4th when Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was was assassinated, and went through summer till the... "protest activities" around the Democratic National Convention that started August 23, 1968... Some kind of trouble is regularly brewing up in a country as unsettled and tumultuous as ours.
I recall the '65 Blackout very clearly, as my family had relatives that lived in Brooklyn and they were all joking about the event, at the time. I find it quite odd that I don't recall any news print nor have any memories of family on the phone, as would be the norm, surrounding the '77 Blackout. Must not have been paying attention then, cause I just graduated high school and was focused on girls and hang gliding and snorkeling for my food, in no particular order.
I was 14 and we lived in the Bronx. There wasn't any looting in my neighborhood. When people realized it was the whole city, people dragged couches out into the streets and it turned into a block party. Crime in NYC was far worse in the 70s and 80s than now, or any other time. Things started getting better during the economic boom of the 90s. Poverty and despair breed crime and drug addiction.
One of the things America lost in the 60's was morals. I guess morals do matter.
@kragsevenThe early 60's had better morals than the late 60's. Yes, I was there. I think our morals are worse today. I am a Christian, but I am not a racist, nor am I a liberal, socialist, or communist. What type of beliefs do you hold that would make you think that most Christians would condone lynching a person, dragging them behind a truck, or assassination? Before the Civil War, the North was far more racist than the Christian South. Some Northern states had passed amendments to their Constitutions preventing blacks from living in their state. Most of the racialism in the South developed after the Civil War because of the antagonistic policies of the Radical Republicans (communists) who dominated Congress. Out of the Civil War came large monopolistic corporations, a big and growing federal government, a growing federal debt, the continual erosion of our Constitutional freedoms, and the deterioration of our morals.
Christianity was not forced into our Constitution or our government. When our Constitution was instituted, almost every American was a Christian and so were the delegates that wrote the document. We have Constitutional freedoms because of Christians not in spite of Christians. The way you refer to Christians, it seems as if you think they are a plague.
Granted there are Christians who are intolerant and narrow-minded. Those type of Christians elevate their doctrine over love; it makes them hypocritical at best and dangerous at worst. Truthfully, that statement can be applied to any religion or political belief not just Christianity. There are a lot of examples throughout history of people operating under the Christian banner (who may or may not have been real Christians) who thought their doctrine was so important that they justified murder and torture. But if you think they were bad, they run a distant second to the Satanists and atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or Idi Amin for example. One thing is sure, when the Utopians (globalists) are in power, expect tyranny. Most of the tyranny in our government and culture are a result of the Utopians, not Christians.