The bus driver getting the kids safely home to let their parents know they were safe, all the while not knowing if his own kids were safe, that's the detail that brought a tear. I can't even imagine.
Quietly doing his duty to the community before tending to his own business. One of many small heroes of the day. Not doing anything flashy, just reducing the pain of his fellow humans. 🫡
I think it was very noble, what he did. Most people would have told the kids to walk home or just run off and left them because of the understandable concern for their own children. Rather than doing that, he made sure all of the students made it home safely before tending to his own. I view that as very heroic.
This is devastating but I’m grateful for the change in smell. Two weeks ago we were saved by that smell. No one had noticed the gas leak and were all fatigued. The smell alerted us.
Nowadays the reporters wouldn't help with the rescue. They'd say that journalism ETHICS prevent them from getting involved in a story. Just like they now do in an amazing amount of stories.
In mid April, I happened to get off work early one day. I walked near our furnace and into a wall of that mercaptan smell. Obviously immediately got the gas company out. The tech said the gas company was actually really pleased they were already getting these calls, because the gas company had just increased the amount of mercaptan they put in the gas, intending to catch the very smallest leaks, which might have gone unnoticed before if someone hadn't basically put their face right up next to the leak. They thought this was important given what we now know about even very small long-term exposures to gas. He fixed the issue at no charge to us or our landlady, and since he was here on a callout, that triggered a check of our line location - a wing of the house had been built over it decades ago. 3 weeks later our line was rerouted in a safer way, too - also at no cost due to the age of the house. They're going through the entire town doing this and would have checked our house's line eventually, but the callout moved the timeline up. I'm pretty happy about all this, really.
When listening to such a horrible disaster a person could question why so many innocent children had to be slaughtered. But in the end, the amount of lives saved by their unwitting sacrifice is unfathomable. Reality is a very strange place.
The chalkboard with the message about how great natural gas is and the sanding machine being called Ol' Sparky are little details that would be so obviously unrealistic if this wasn't a true story
My mother remembered New London well. She was a student at Arp High School, where she was a member of the volleyball team. She told me that Arp was scheduled to play New London that afternoon. The bus carrying the volleyball team to New London was stopped several miles outside of the city and sent back to Arp without explanation. When they arrived in Arp, they received news of the explosion. She told me that she heard accounts of desperate parents, rushing from one location to another, as they looked frantically for their children.
Both my father's parents and two aunts survived New London. My grandfather still had plaster embedded in his shoulder when he passed away in 1991 and his sister could not have children due to her injuries. She's still kicking at 103, literally. For years we went to the bi-annual reunion taking my grandmother to Texas from IL. It was the richest school in the country due to the oil production on the grounds. It was also the first news story that Walter Cronkite covered as a reporter, and he said he would never forget it.
As a United Press correspondent, Cronkite covered the landings in North Africa & Sicily, the Allied invasion of Normandy & the subsequent battles across France & Germany. Cronkite was a member if the "writing 69th" and accompanied Allied bombers over Germany. He visited Vietnam to report on the Vietnam War.
Especially since he either didn't know the kids well enough to have that job or they were so mangled that only a parent might recognize their own child.
@@adde9506 I don't think he knew all hundreds of students well enough to identify them by their name. They probably meant the adults - the 40 teachers.
fun little side thing about the smell of natural gas: my professor in gen chem 1 back in community college told us a story about while he was working in his lab on sulfur containing compounds for his phd he had a intern dump some waste liquid down the drain, that waste liquid reacted with the water and whatever in the drain to create hydrogen sulfide ie: the smell of rotten eggs and it travelled through the drains into every room in the science building and also the arts building at his university, causing the entire place to be evacuated until they finally found out the smell was coming from the in floor drains and not the gas lines he got in serious trouble for that one
Similarly to gardenguy’s story above, when I was in high school, one of the common chemistry experiments was to react a Rock with acid. But this rock contained a sulfide compound, and the reaction led to the formation of a small amount of hydrogen sulfide, and the whole school smelled of rotten eggs. Not enough to be harmful, but enough to stink up the place.
I knew a malodorant was added to natural gas, but did not know the backstory. Then I met the man who is now my spouse. One day I said something about the awful smell natural gas and he asked if I knew _why_ it smelled that way. That was the day I learned of the New London School disaster. His mother was a preschooler at the time. Her eldest sister and brother did not survive the blast and another sister, thrown from the building, never walked unaided again. Their father was one of the oilfield workers who helped dig thru the rubble. It isn't something that's ever discussed by the family and what it must have been like in that household in the aftermath doesn't bear contemplation.
@@StrazdasLTdo you not know what “spouse” means? They wrote a lovely comment sharing the tragic experience of their partner’s family, and this is what you reply?
I feel like that detail about First Lady Roosevelt and Hitler sending their condolences will stick out in most minds that see this video. You really do a great job telling these stories.
@traybernHe did his job as he was supposed to do, giving peace to some families, and then went back to help. And why would he take the younger children back to see the bodies of perhaps older brothers or sisters brought from the wreckage?
@traybern The bus had already left the school when it exploded. And there is nothing to indicate he knew the explosion came from the school, only that he heard the sound.
@traybern He was already on his route. And again, why should little children see the older children being dragged from the rubble? Traumatizing enough to realize the school had blown up.
@traybern you really don’t understand what seeing people they care about getting harmed does to a child. A lot of children who had fathers that would physically and mentally abuse their mothers would be traumatized from witnessing it. If I were the bus driver, I’d also wanna make sure the younger kids wouldn’t see that shit. Besides buses probably didn’t go fast enough back then. We can’t always save everyone and although it’s sad, we have to realize that in situations like this, without proper planning of an evacuation or lockdown because of a serious event (such as a gas leak or shooting), we’re not gonna be able to save everyone. We can try to save as many lives as we can but sometimes we just can’t reach someone in time. It sucks that sometimes we can’t save people but we have to move on and hope they’re in a better place now.
It's impressive that since 2021 when I started watching the channel, that with every new video and all the old ones I've watched I've heard of three videos prior to watching this channel. He has well over a hundred videos and I knew three, it's very impressive and helps keep history alive
Saw an interview with a survivor and he said he switched seats with a girl so he could sit behind the girl he liked. He lived and the girl he switched seats with died. He said he struggled with that for years. On a side note I rode in an elevator in DC with Cronkite.
It's always particularly tragic when children are involved 😢. And at such massive scale, too. It's like a good chunk of the town's future died that day.
I was reading something about the history of this tragedy. They did, in fact, lose most of a generation. Those lost likely would have been drafted 4 1/2 years later into the WW2 if this hadn’t happened.
I appreciate how he goes into detail and uses multiple metric systems. Keeps his audience focused instead of looking up the conversion of either metric system.
Thank you for covering this. My grandmother was a survivor of this incident. She would never speak about it; she was so traumatized. She was spooked easily by loud noises and she would snap at us kids if we screamed while we played together. Looking back, I think had been haunted her whole life by what she survived. But back then, you pressed through tragedy. There was no therapy for it. The museum is a really good one - they have transcripts of witness accounts and diaries people kept that you can read through. It’s very haunting.
It is important to know that any switch of electricity produces a spark, it doesn't have to be faulty and it can happen turning something on as well as off and in automated systems such as a central heating pump. So if you smell gas in a building you need to get out and leave the door open without turning any switches on or off. Turn off the gas valve if you can but don't put yourself at risk to do that.
Ages ago my grandfather, who had no sense of smell, accidentally knocked on the switch of the gas stove in the kitchen and then fell asleep. My grandmother returned from shopping and of course came into the kitchen to put the things away. She was about to turn on the light switch but then realized that the gas had been built up (it had the added smell this video mentions) and instead opened the doors and windows to ventilate. Had she turned on the switch that in itself would have been enough to likely blow up a part of the house.
My Grandmother had a gas stove when I was a kid. We spent a lot of time with her. We were taught if we smelled gas, we (the female kids) gathered the other kids and went straight outside without touching anything for this very reason. Better safe than sorry. Nothing bad ever happened but I do still vividly remember the almost swoony smell of gas.
Recently, in my neighborhood, the gas company moved all of the gas meters to the exterior of the building. Now, all meters, pressure regulators, and valves are on the outside of the building, making it easier to turn the gas off, and also placing all potential sources of leaks from gas company equipment in the open air.
@@WholeWheatWhale That was the same lesson we received in school. Get the hell out, don't touch anything on the way, and let the gas co. and fire dept. deal with it. We lived in an all-electric house at the time, but it's a lesson that everyone needs to remember. The odor can help save your life.
As well as electrical switches, most electric motors produce sparks during normal operation from the commutator brushes - this was probably what "Old Sparkey" was doing. That's effectively turning circuits on and off as the motor spins. So a motor with brushes, a "universal motor," is a big hazard - not sure if it would be better to leave it on or risk shutting it off, both are hazardous - best to just get the hell out of there.
I had multiple family members who experienced the New London explosion as teachers, parents, and students. I first learned this story from my grandmother while visiting the family cemetery in nearby Peatown, TX. W. G. Watson who survived but was mistakenly identified among the dead is one of these relatives.
My grandfather told me about this event because he lived in the area when it happened. It was a terrible tragedy that clearly affected him. He knew students who were killed that day. I'm so glad you've covered it.
My 4th grade teacher was blow out of a third floor window in this blast. She was a student at the school, when it happened. Her folks were Vidalia onion farmers. (developed by a German Horticulturalist, in Texas) She would be talking to us, and a tiny spot of blood would show up on her face. It was glass from the window still coming out of her in tiny pieces in the 1970's. She told my folks, they wrapped her up like a mummy, and sent her to school the next day one county over. She was just happy, she got to ride the school bus.
i live nearby and have been to the New London School museum. they have all the trinkets and all sorts of memories attached to the school. what really gets me- one body had been so badly mangled that they could only identify him by a pocket knife he had painted red with his mom's nail polish. the knife was on display.
I remember reading a book about this disaster and how they scapegoated the school principal even though that whole community was illegally siphoning natural gas. And they knew there was a risk in doing that.
Pretty sore it was legal at the time. There was no requirement for odorant to be added. That law was because of this and other smaller tragities like it
If everyone was doing it(siphoning that is) that says some nasty things about the parents and not just the principal. Ugh, bad idea to illegally mess with gas lines. And once again children pay for adult stupid.
It's not that it was illegal, it just sounds like there were no codes and regulations for how it was to be hooked up and maintained. Millions of houses have gas lines and it's very rare for there to be an explosion like this, both because of the oderants added to natural gas and regulations regarding how pipes should be made and built. "Safety standards are written in blood."
“First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sent a telegram to express her sympathy,” “As did the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler” Well that took a turn
I’m pretty sure some people sang a different tune either after Kristalnacht or during and after ww2 and after the horrors of the Holocaust were fully revealed.
His calm demeanor, lack of sensationalism, and insistence on keeping to the facts is what makes this channel so great. It's one of the few channels that makes me cry because it is calm and straightforward.
One of my university professors said that the unmistakable odor which was added to natural gas is basically the smell of rotting flesh. This odor was used to help workers locate gas pipeline leaks in remote areas (deserts, etc) because buzzards were attracted to the smell and would circle overhead.
I came home from school once and smelled it as I approached the back door. I didn’t know what was going on, but the smell was bad enough to send me to the neighbor’s house. They called my mom and the fire dept. Our gas heat had a malfunction and the house had been filling up with gas.
Your professor maybe never saw a desert before. Sometimes farms use sulfur to fertilize, which does not attract vultures either. When a pipeline leaks here in the desert, the vultures would only notice if a pipeline worker was dead on the ground. Vultures don't smell for the death, they just smell like death!
I've experienced enough to differentiate between methyl mercaptan and a rotting human. Either way, the scent grabs your attention. One comes with more mental baggage.
What I am surprised me the most about this tragedy was not just that Adolf Hitlter expressed sorrows or was the fact that the gas companies and reporters pitched in to help. What really surprised me was that appropriate state action was taken much sooner rather than it takes these days. Also, the fact that the smell of natural gas is actually mixed in by humans (the substance called Mercaptin though I may have misspelled that). I think it is appropriate that since the introduction of the chemical came after this horrible disaster, it should be called the smell of destruction
Mercaptans is correct - they're a group of hydrocarbons that have an attached extra sulfur and hydrogen atom. Even tiny amounts of these compounds stink, so it's added to warn of a gas leak. The tiny amounts are harmless in themselves - of course the main risk is the large amount of methane gas released in a leak....
I mean Hitler was a politician. Remember when Castro died and, despite being one of the most evil bastards ever, got condolences from almost everybody? It's in the same vein.
@@psyxypher3881, most of the world leaders know each other and some are even related behind the scenes. Most of them are not everymen but descendants of the aristocracies a few centuries back.
Thanks for covering this. My mother was in high school in East Texas at the time. She told us this story many times growing up. We also learned about it in school, along with the Texas City port explosion and the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston.
@@Mr_Welch After the 1900 hurricane, Galveston built an enormous seawall, and backfilled it to raise the height of the entire island by 20 feet. Houses were put on jacks and soil added underneath. The next hurricane in 1919 they stood on top of the seawall and gave the middle finger to Mother Nature. You've never heard of the 1919 hurricane for a reason.
I appreciate you cover the tragedies that we hardly remember it today. Keep it up, @FascinatingHorror. I really felt sorry for those kids who lost their lives from that terrible explosion. Those kids who survived, their lives will never be the same when they came back to school after the explosion.
I initially thought this was that one case in which a psycho planted explosives at a school but even that horrid incident was not even close to the magnitude of this one, is disturbing in a way that a man with the full intent of doing as much damage as possible did not come close to do as much harm as what simple incompetence did here. That case is btw the Bath School disaster.
It's exactly why we should be VERY CAREFUL about too quickly assigning blame over "malice" when ordinary clumsiness and incompetence are often the "source" of disaster. ;o)
That was the Bath School explosion in Michigan in 1927. I'm not sure it's been covered by Fascinating Horror (or at least, I can't find the video!) but there are a ton of videos on UA-cam about it if you do a search.
My cousin is actually a trained guide for the museum for this disaster! Last February I got to go and have a personal tour and hear the story, it was pretty amazing!
I took care of a lady back in the late 90’s who was at this school when it blew up. I had never heard of it. I wish I remembered her name. I’m sure she is long gone, but amazing that she survived.
Wow, excellent job, Fascinating Horror! I am so glad that you covered this event on your channel. I have visited the New London Museum and it was a moving experience.
Yeah, I damn near sprayed Dr. Pepper all over my laptop when I heard that one. It's like, "Wait-- *that* genocidal f@^k-up sent his condolences!? What alternate dimension did *I* fall into?"
There is a saying that even evil has standards. Yes Adolf Hitler was mostly a horrible irredeemable monster but apparently even he had good qualities. For instance he was kind to most children albeit only those who weren’t Jewish or who didn’t belong to a group that Hitler hated and he was also apparently a vegetarian who was kind towards animals and made laws protecting animals such as forbidding the experimenting and abuse of animals and said that all animals were to be treated with respect. He also passed a law that controlled cigarette usage and even made anti smoking campaigns and even encouraged pregnant women to not smoke and banned smoking in public places and even beautified and modernized Germany and even wanted to make a modern Germany where a German could own a car and contribute to the modern world. However that still doesn’t undo or justify the horrible things that he did to millions of innocent people. He was a brutal dictator who brutally oppressed anyone who opposed him and even those who he deemed a threat to him and his rule even if they were completely innocent. In addition he was also a imfamous rabid racist and anti semite who brutally persecuted Jewish people and other minorities and denied them their rights. He then confined them into ghettos where they were forced to live in horrible conditions which ended up resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and then constructed concentration camps where many innocent people including over 1 million innocent Jewish people were killed. Then he ordered the construction of death camps like Auschwitz and ordered the mass killing of all Jewish people and other minorities either via shooting or gassing or other causes thus resulting in the deaths of millions of innocent people including 1.5 million innocent children. In addition he ordered the invasion of Poland which was one of the major causes of ww2 thus also making him responsible for the deaths of millions of other people.
I'm from the UK but know Walter Cronkite from his work presenting the 90s TV show Dinosaur and various interviews related to Viet Nam, space travel, and politics. His take on the event was a worthy way to end. I felt a chill run through me. Horrific event.
One of the saddest facts is that there were only 30 surviving seniors in the graduating class. Since 500 died, students and staff, I’d guess that at least half of the Class of 1937 died. I’m assuming that the students in 5th-12th grades were in roughly equally sized grade levels. The town lost a large percentage of the generation aged 11-18 that day.
There’s a play that has circled around the Texas theatre community based on these events. The play is titled ‘The Girl With The White Pinafore.’ Middle school & high school theatre programs in Texas have frequently performed it, so the story itself has seen an uptick in awareness. It’s a great play, & I cannot recommend it enough!
I remember my first experience with gas. I had never dealt with it before and consequently knew nothing about it. I was helping out at a church on like a Tuesday morning and was washing dishes while the rest of the guys went out and started other various tasks. After awhile I had a headache and things smelled bad so I left. I went and found one of the priests/preachers(military base) and complained that the kitchen smelled of rotten eggs and was giving me a headache and could I open a window(I asked for permission because the A/C was on and it was rather hot out) for a bit to air out the smell. Next thing I know we're all outside and the fire department was swarming the church. It turns out a pilot light on the stove went out and gas was leaking. I was terrified of that sort of gas for years after that. I vaguely remember hearing about this somewhere(maybe a grandparent?) but had no idea that this sad incident was responsible for making sure I was able to smell that leak nearly 8 decades later.
Gas pipes in a void beneath the floor? You can tell where this one is going...... Interesyting that this was the event that led to something you could smell being added to gas. In retrospect it seems so obvious.
The smell is from a chemical called mercaptan which is ironically also toxic and flammable. The smell actually saved my entire family in the 1990s because at the time of the incident the local gas company had unknowingly install several defective seals in the connection from their meter into private homes. Because the gas meter is located outside, in most cases the leaked gas would had been dissipated, but in some cases the gas (being lighter than air) would enter and accumulate in the attics if there an overhanging eave. Had I not been outside near the gas meter that particular day and smelled the mercaptan, I would never had known because I would not had smelled it from inside the house and with my air conditioner and furnace in the attic, there would had been an explosion.
I grew up in Rusk County in the 1950s and was always fascinated by this tragedy. I discovered Hitler’s telegram in the local library and read whatever I could find, but the grownups would never talk about the explosion. It was as if it hadn’t happened; it was too painful to revisit. Only at the 50th anniversary in 1987 did the community finally acknowledge the pain and emotion, open up about the event, and begin to heal.
In the '70s I used to travel to New London to visit friends. It's hard to believe that such a small town had such a large high school. I researched New London then and discovered the explosion. The next time I went to New London, I tried to talk about it with my friends. They refused to talk about it. If I remember right, the father of my friends worked for Humble Oil.
I was one of the ones who requested this topic. This episode turned out even better than I imagined it would! Hell I even learned some new details I didn't know before! Thank you so much for shedding some light on this little known tragedy, it's one that has definitely stuck with me, ever since I learned about it as a kid growing up in East Texas. ❤
I remember hearing this vaguely years ago, like it somehow was just mentioned somewhere and I don’t recall where but this is a great overview of what happened. Keep up the great work man!
Same. At first I thought it was a reupload, but must have seen it on a different channel. Edit: The channel "Well I Never" also covered this. Highly recommend!
That's just something heads of state are supposed to do when relations are cordial. And at the time Adolf liked America due to a large amount of German immigrants in the country.
this was before the war. Time awarded him the person of the year. Whatever he did during the war, you have to acknowledge what kind of a comeback Germany and its economy had after being destroyed during WWI
@@ThePointlessBox_ The only thing you have to acknowledge is that people fall for scummy politicians. Especially the journalists, and of course their fellow scummy politicians abroad.
I have a relative who died in the explosion-Mary Bennet. My mom’s side of the family still live in or near Rusk County, and I visit nearby Henderson to see my Grandma several times a year. A few years ago I went to New London and found Mary’s name on the memorial statue they have there. She was 11 or 12 I believe. As my Grandma tells it, supposedly Mary didn’t want to go to school that morning. She told her mom she didn’t feel good, but when asked if it was a stomachache or fever, she said she just had a “bad feeling”. She ended up having to go to school, and died in the explosion.
Thanks for sharing another interesting piece of history with us. Glad we learn from past mistakes and take precautions to avoid such tragedies from happening.
I'm so happy to see you finally covered this tragedy!! I live not too far from here and the museum is such a somber place, to see all of the little clothes that the kids were in when the explosion happened really put it into perspective. The tour guide is always someone that was there that day as a child and its so interesting to hear the story first hand.
If anyone is interested in knowing more about this disaster, I heavily recommend reading "Oh, My God! It's Our Children!", a Texas Monthly article published on March 2007. It contains many firsthand accounts of the disaster. Many accounts stood out to me, but one that got my heart wrenching was when a survivor got home from the bus, she was immediately barraged by around 8 mothers, screaming if she had seen their children. 6 out of the 8 mothers lost a kid in the disaster. Some other accounts of the disaster included in the article: 1) A girl identifying her sister's remains through her shoes. 2) A boy describing his deceased friend's head as "flat as a newspaper." 3) A girl jumping from one of the floors, only to die via impalement through glass. 4) Upon her deathbed, the mother of one of the survivors said that she was surrounded by children, as if she were seeing the victims in the afterlife. 5) The most famous story of that of a boy by the name of Bill Thompson, who switched seats with a girl. Explosion ensues, killing the girl, but the boy survived. At the 40th anniversary of the explosion, wracked with guilt, he encounters the sister of the girl who died and asks for forgiveness. You have little idea how long I've been waiting for you to make this video, Fascinating Horror.
That's the problem with telling reporters not to do their job. The US government determined there wasn't enough evidence left by the time they did their investigation.
@VideoDotGoogleDotCom Hitler thought the racists in America were too obvious, he wanted a more subtle master race model for Germans. The "American model" was too racist for Hitler. America is not the good guys.
@@VideoDotGoogleDotCom Yeah I'm stupid and forgot basic history. But still - it's the policy of war. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least until war ends.
It's so sad that there was no immediate way of warning everyone within the school about the danger of the gas leak and explosion. Thanks once again to FH for highlighting another tragedy I'd never heard of
I had multiple gas leaks in my house last year, and I only knew because of the smell. I remember it smelling like a mixture of skunk, farts, and a chemical smell. I called the gas company, and they came out with the gas detecting machine. On the initial walkthrough, he didn't pick up any traces of gas. So he waited for the hot water furnace to recycle and walked through again. He found two very small leaks and shut the gas off. The leaks were repaired in a few days and the gas was turned back on. For multiple weeks after that, I kept smelling something repeatedly. I called the gas company out and they found nothing. I felt embarrassed for being paranoid. Well, I kept smelling the same odor, so I called them out again. They ended up finding a bunch of small gas leaks throughout all of the piping. They had to replace all of the gas piping and the furnace. Still to this day, I have panic attacks when I think I smell something weird in my house, even though I know it has all be repaired and replaced. I am on medication and go to therapy, but this experience gave me very severe anxiety about gas leaks in my house. I am just grateful they were small leaks, and nothing like the New London School explosion. It was still absolutely terrifying, and I highly recommend people get a carbon monoxide detector and know what gas smells like.
This is one that sticks out at me, and it makes me wonder how often this can happen around the world even nowadays, I mean there was a similar leak and blast in 1992 or 1993 as well, then you had the Hutchinson blasts in 2001 though, and the 1942 East Cleveland explosions though
RM Palmer Candy Company explosion in West Reading, PA this year is another example. Many workers reported smelling a foul odor and yet the facility wasn't immediately evacuated. Several people were killed.
I just finished listening to Disastrous History’s old episode on this and it’s really fascinating the different things you both focus on. I absolutely adore your videos I just thought it was a funny coincidence.
I had just yesterday, whilst changing the tanks on my forklift (not mine personally, mind you) wondered what the catalyst for adding the noxious odor to propane might be. And now I know
I was cooking dinner as I was listening to this, and just as the topic of parents fighting to see the bodies, my father came up to say something, and when I tuned back in, the first thing I heard was a name that made me double check what video I had open to begin with. It's not every day that a certain moustached man gets mentioned outside of a certain few contexts.
Silly notion unrelated to the topic at hand but, of all true horror/crime channels I watch (near a hundred at this point), this narrator is by far my favourite one.
I can relate to the kid that heard his name listed as one of the deceased. I "died" in a car accident when I was still in high school. There was an actual fatal accident that had occurred and the car involved just happened to be the same make, model and color of the car I owned at the time. It spread to my entire school that it was me so you can imagine the shock that a lot were in when I showed up to class on Monday morning. 😆
Hey, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your podcast, they are definitely my favourite and I recommend them to everyone. I respect and admire the wonderful way, you tell these stories on behalf of the victims. Please continue with your channel, I’m your number 1, superfan from Australia 💛💛💛
For further information about this tragedy, I highly recommend "Gone at 3:17, the Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History," by David M. Brown and Michael Wereschagin.
I went to school in Rusk County as a kid, and we visited the museum in around 2004 or 05. I have always remembered the story of a kid who had cut class that morning but was caught by his dad and sent back to school only to die in the explosion. I think his name was Perry Lee Cox if I remember correctly
That added smell in the gas has also saved me. I've trained myself to quickly react if I ever smell it since I was a kid, when a small gas leak happened in our school kitchen, and we were quickly evacuated. That smell that many people consider awful has saved many lives.
My great aunt worked at that school. I used to hear stories about the explosion when she was alive. On the day of the explosion, she took ill and did not go into work. It was terrifying to hear the story as a young boy, and terrifying now to learn more about it.
wow never thought id see a doc on this!! i lived in Overton and Henderson, two towns less than 10 minutes drive and people still talk about the tragedy when we pass the school. there is also the Depo Museum, which as some history there about the students
I grew up in the area and vaguely recall the memorials held on the 50th anniversary. I have never forgotten the school trip out there when I was an elementary student. Listening to the stories from the people who were there or lost loved ones was indescribable. The oil boom brought a lot of prosperity and good fortune to the area around that time which made it all the more devastating. But we still remember and mourn for those lost and affected.
The bus driver getting the kids safely home to let their parents know they were safe, all the while not knowing if his own kids were safe, that's the detail that brought a tear. I can't even imagine.
The fact that one of his kids actually died is just tragic
Quietly doing his duty to the community before tending to his own business. One of many small heroes of the day. Not doing anything flashy, just reducing the pain of his fellow humans. 🫡
My mother was one of the elementary school students in that bus.
I'm also related to quite a few of the ones who died that day.
And this story probably was repeated more than once that fateful day..
I think it was very noble, what he did. Most people would have told the kids to walk home or just run off and left them because of the understandable concern for their own children. Rather than doing that, he made sure all of the students made it home safely before tending to his own. I view that as very heroic.
This is devastating but I’m grateful for the change in smell. Two weeks ago we were saved by that smell. No one had noticed the gas leak and were all fatigued. The smell alerted us.
Glad you noticed
Nowadays the reporters wouldn't help with the rescue. They'd say that journalism ETHICS prevent them from getting involved in a story. Just like they now do in an amazing amount of stories.
In mid April, I happened to get off work early one day. I walked near our furnace and into a wall of that mercaptan smell. Obviously immediately got the gas company out. The tech said the gas company was actually really pleased they were already getting these calls, because the gas company had just increased the amount of mercaptan they put in the gas, intending to catch the very smallest leaks, which might have gone unnoticed before if someone hadn't basically put their face right up next to the leak. They thought this was important given what we now know about even very small long-term exposures to gas.
He fixed the issue at no charge to us or our landlady, and since he was here on a callout, that triggered a check of our line location - a wing of the house had been built over it decades ago. 3 weeks later our line was rerouted in a safer way, too - also at no cost due to the age of the house. They're going through the entire town doing this and would have checked our house's line eventually, but the callout moved the timeline up.
I'm pretty happy about all this, really.
@@jonslg240lol come on. What a stupid comment
When listening to such a horrible disaster a person could question why so many innocent children had to be slaughtered. But in the end, the amount of lives saved by their unwitting sacrifice is unfathomable. Reality is a very strange place.
The chalkboard with the message about how great natural gas is and the sanding machine being called Ol' Sparky are little details that would be so obviously unrealistic if this wasn't a true story
It's like something out of the Simpsons!
@@bowenorcutt78 or a Stephen King novel.
It's one of those things that, if you put it in a book, no one would believe it because it's so on the nose. And yet.
"Ol' Sparky"
Me: Oh this ain't gonna end well. 😬
@@thatlittlevoice6354Or a video game.
My mother remembered New London well. She was a student at Arp High School, where she was a member of the volleyball team. She told me that Arp was scheduled to play New London that afternoon. The bus carrying the volleyball team to New London was stopped several miles outside of the city and sent back to Arp without explanation. When they arrived in Arp, they received news of the explosion. She told me that she heard accounts of desperate parents, rushing from one location to another, as they looked frantically for their children.
Both my father's parents and two aunts survived New London. My grandfather still had plaster embedded in his shoulder when he passed away in 1991 and his sister could not have children due to her injuries. She's still kicking at 103, literally. For years we went to the bi-annual reunion taking my grandmother to Texas from IL. It was the richest school in the country due to the oil production on the grounds. It was also the first news story that Walter Cronkite covered as a reporter, and he said he would never forget it.
The video talked about Walter Chronkite
The fact that Walter said that was the most troubling thing he witnessed and reported on says something.
As a United Press correspondent, Cronkite covered the landings in North Africa & Sicily, the Allied invasion of Normandy & the subsequent battles across France & Germany. Cronkite was a member if the "writing 69th" and accompanied Allied bombers over Germany. He visited Vietnam to report on the Vietnam War.
Tell your grandfather's sister that an internet stranger wishes her well and sorry that she went through something horrible as this.
@@thaliabirrueta8456 I will.
I feel so bad for the principal having to identify all those bodies 😔 I’m sure that was traumatizing
Especially since he either didn't know the kids well enough to have that job or they were so mangled that only a parent might recognize their own child.
@@adde9506 It was probably a combination of both.
Yes, must have been horrible and something he never got over 😢
@@adde9506 I don't think he knew all hundreds of students well enough to identify them by their name. They probably meant the adults - the 40 teachers.
Except the principal was strongly responsible for the accident...
fun little side thing about the smell of natural gas:
my professor in gen chem 1 back in community college told us a story about while he was working in his lab on sulfur containing compounds for his phd he had a intern dump some waste liquid down the drain, that waste liquid reacted with the water and whatever in the drain to create hydrogen sulfide ie: the smell of rotten eggs and it travelled through the drains into every room in the science building and also the arts building at his university, causing the entire place to be evacuated until they finally found out the smell was coming from the in floor drains and not the gas lines
he got in serious trouble for that one
Isn’t gas odorless until treated to make it smell bad for safety reasons? Anyway oops. LOL Sulphur is a stinky business indeed.
@@YuBeace Yes, other wise we would be exploding more in our houses. We are not able to know the ""smell"" of gas.
@Yul--yes, because of this incident.
Similarly to gardenguy’s story above, when I was in high school, one of the common chemistry experiments was to react a Rock with acid. But this rock contained a sulfide compound, and the reaction led to the formation of a small amount of hydrogen sulfide, and the whole school smelled of rotten eggs. Not enough to be harmful, but enough to stink up the place.
@@dawnstorm9768 Yeah I figured, I was halfway through the video, but the way the comment was worded confused me :P
This intro music is truly the best 'eerie' music. So well written and perfect for this channel, I hope it never changes.
Very true, it’s not over the top dramatic/spooky, but still sets a proper tone that something isn’t right.
Whenever this song pops into my head randomly I wonder “what is about to go wrong?” Haha
It's good but did you ever hear the OLD song?! Even more eerie!
I have it as my ring tone.
Especially the ‘outro’ (ending) music!
I knew a malodorant was added to natural gas, but did not know the backstory. Then I met the man who is now my spouse. One day I said something about the awful smell natural gas and he asked if I knew _why_ it smelled that way. That was the day I learned of the New London School disaster. His mother was a preschooler at the time. Her eldest sister and brother did not survive the blast and another sister, thrown from the building, never walked unaided again. Their father was one of the oilfield workers who helped dig thru the rubble. It isn't something that's ever discussed by the family and what it must have been like in that household in the aftermath doesn't bear contemplation.
Regards to all those that were lost, and all that loved them. Thank you for sharing your comment.
The malodorant is called mercaptan. FWIW
I wanna believe that after you learnt that, you married the man
A man who is now your spouse? Did you meant to say husband?
@@StrazdasLTdo you not know what “spouse” means? They wrote a lovely comment sharing the tragic experience of their partner’s family, and this is what you reply?
@@tarynolyvia Yes, Spouse is used to describe a female.
I feel like that detail about First Lady Roosevelt and Hitler sending their condolences will stick out in most minds that see this video. You really do a great job telling these stories.
I admire the bus driver continuing to do his job knowing that parents would be worried.
@traybernhe would've had to wait till like 2006 though, but I'm sure he considered it
@traybernHe did his job as he was supposed to do, giving peace to some families, and then went back to help. And why would he take the younger children back to see the bodies of perhaps older brothers or sisters brought from the wreckage?
@traybern The bus had already left the school when it exploded. And there is nothing to indicate he knew the explosion came from the school, only that he heard the sound.
@traybern He was already on his route. And again, why should little children see the older children being dragged from the rubble? Traumatizing enough to realize the school had blown up.
@traybern you really don’t understand what seeing people they care about getting harmed does to a child. A lot of children who had fathers that would physically and mentally abuse their mothers would be traumatized from witnessing it. If I were the bus driver, I’d also wanna make sure the younger kids wouldn’t see that shit. Besides buses probably didn’t go fast enough back then. We can’t always save everyone and although it’s sad, we have to realize that in situations like this, without proper planning of an evacuation or lockdown because of a serious event (such as a gas leak or shooting), we’re not gonna be able to save everyone. We can try to save as many lives as we can but sometimes we just can’t reach someone in time. It sucks that sometimes we can’t save people but we have to move on and hope they’re in a better place now.
I like how this channel covers so many tragedies that I'm not familiar with so it will never become stale
It's impressive that since 2021 when I started watching the channel, that with every new video and all the old ones I've watched I've heard of three videos prior to watching this channel. He has well over a hundred videos and I knew three, it's very impressive and helps keep history alive
Wonder if in a few years it will cover the oceangate sub implosion
Me too, never heard of this carnage 🙏
@@struttux5156if not this year, maybe within the next year or 2.
@@lisabarnes924 Yeah. I don't know what the time rules are on this channel but i guess some waiting is needed out of respect
Saw an interview with a survivor and he said he switched seats with a girl so he could sit behind the girl he liked. He lived and the girl he switched seats with died. He said he struggled with that for years. On a side note I rode in an elevator in DC with Cronkite.
Way to make everything, even a disaster, about you...
Are you really that insecure?
It's always particularly tragic when children are involved 😢. And at such massive scale, too. It's like a good chunk of the town's future died that day.
Agree, as with the Aberfan disaster of 1966 which has been covered on this channel.
Indeed. At least this one was simply an accident through lack of knowledge and understanding, unlike Aberfam which was just pure negligence.
I was reading something about the history of this tragedy. They did, in fact, lose most of a generation. Those lost likely would have been drafted 4 1/2 years later into the WW2 if this hadn’t happened.
Looks like the town is still small.
It never recovered
@@hia5235A lot of towns boomed because of oil and gas and then died back down afterwards. I'm sure this contributed to it as well though.
I appreciate how he goes into detail and uses multiple metric systems. Keeps his audience focused instead of looking up the conversion of either metric system.
The metric system is just a fad Superman.
Thank you for covering this.
My grandmother was a survivor of this incident.
She would never speak about it; she was so traumatized. She was spooked easily by loud noises and she would snap at us kids if we screamed while we played together. Looking back, I think had been haunted her whole life by what she survived. But back then, you pressed through tragedy. There was no therapy for it.
The museum is a really good one - they have transcripts of witness accounts and diaries people kept that you can read through. It’s very haunting.
It is important to know that any switch of electricity produces a spark, it doesn't have to be faulty and it can happen turning something on as well as off and in automated systems such as a central heating pump. So if you smell gas in a building you need to get out and leave the door open without turning any switches on or off. Turn off the gas valve if you can but don't put yourself at risk to do that.
Ages ago my grandfather, who had no sense of smell, accidentally knocked on the switch of the gas stove in the kitchen and then fell asleep. My grandmother returned from shopping and of course came into the kitchen to put the things away. She was about to turn on the light switch but then realized that the gas had been built up (it had the added smell this video mentions) and instead opened the doors and windows to ventilate. Had she turned on the switch that in itself would have been enough to likely blow up a part of the house.
My Grandmother had a gas stove when I was a kid. We spent a lot of time with her. We were taught if we smelled gas, we (the female kids) gathered the other kids and went straight outside without touching anything for this very reason. Better safe than sorry. Nothing bad ever happened but I do still vividly remember the almost swoony smell of gas.
Recently, in my neighborhood, the gas company moved all of the gas meters to the exterior of the building. Now, all meters, pressure regulators, and valves are on the outside of the building, making it easier to turn the gas off, and also placing all potential sources of leaks from gas company equipment in the open air.
@@WholeWheatWhale That was the same lesson we received in school. Get the hell out, don't touch anything on the way, and let the gas co. and fire dept. deal with it. We lived in an all-electric house at the time, but it's a lesson that everyone needs to remember. The odor can help save your life.
As well as electrical switches, most electric motors produce sparks during normal operation from the commutator brushes - this was probably what "Old Sparkey" was doing. That's effectively turning circuits on and off as the motor spins. So a motor with brushes, a "universal motor," is a big hazard - not sure if it would be better to leave it on or risk shutting it off, both are hazardous - best to just get the hell out of there.
Once again, a terrible tragedy brings change that saves countless lives. RIP to all the victims.
One of the many cases in which safety regulations are written in blood.
biggiescarfs No, they use ink.
And I about threw up when it was reported that the billionaire responsible for the Titan submersible said, "at some point, safety is just waste".....
@@RICDirectorGood riddance to that moron honestly
@@RICDirector😲😲😲😲😲😲😡
I had multiple family members who experienced the New London explosion as teachers, parents, and students. I first learned this story from my grandmother while visiting the family cemetery in nearby Peatown, TX. W. G. Watson who survived but was mistakenly identified among the dead is one of these relatives.
My grandfather told me about this event because he lived in the area when it happened. It was a terrible tragedy that clearly affected him. He knew students who were killed that day. I'm so glad you've covered it.
Your poor grandfather must have been traumatized by the loss of his school friends. ❤
My 4th grade teacher was blow out of a third floor window in this blast.
She was a student at the school, when it happened. Her folks were Vidalia
onion farmers. (developed by a German Horticulturalist, in Texas)
She would be talking to us, and a tiny spot of blood would show up on her face.
It was glass from the window still coming out of her in tiny pieces in the 1970's.
She told my folks, they wrapped her up like a mummy, and sent her to school the
next day one county over.
She was just happy, she got to ride the school bus.
i live nearby and have been to the New London School museum. they have all the trinkets and all sorts of memories attached to the school. what really gets me- one body had been so badly mangled that they could only identify him by a pocket knife he had painted red with his mom's nail polish. the knife was on display.
😢
I remember reading a book about this disaster and how they scapegoated the school principal even though that whole community was illegally siphoning natural gas. And they knew there was a risk in doing that.
Pretty sore it was legal at the time. There was no requirement for odorant to be added. That law was because of this and other smaller tragities like it
If everyone was doing it(siphoning that is) that says some nasty things about the parents and not just the principal. Ugh, bad idea to illegally mess with gas lines. And once again children pay for adult stupid.
Principal.
It's not that it was illegal, it just sounds like there were no codes and regulations for how it was to be hooked up and maintained. Millions of houses have gas lines and it's very rare for there to be an explosion like this, both because of the oderants added to natural gas and regulations regarding how pipes should be made and built.
"Safety standards are written in blood."
@@bobbysenterprises3220 but they knew the risk. And people always have to have a scapegoat when things go wrong.
“First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sent a telegram to express her sympathy,”
“As did the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler”
Well that took a turn
Many people around the world thought he was a nice guy... Even Ghandi wrote him a friendly letter.
I’m pretty sure some people sang a different tune either after Kristalnacht or during and after ww2 and after the horrors of the Holocaust were fully revealed.
And every scummy politician does the same thing to this day.
Believe it or not Hitler didn't dislike everyone. He only disliked Jewish people
They still have the actual letter on display at the New London museum. It's mind-boggling.
As tragic as these stories always are, you always do the victims justice with dignity and respect.🧡
I agree!
His calm demeanor, lack of sensationalism, and insistence on keeping to the facts is what makes this channel so great. It's one of the few channels that makes me cry because it is calm and straightforward.
@@daffers2345 that is well said
One of my university professors said that the unmistakable odor which was added to natural gas is basically the smell of rotting flesh. This odor was used to help workers locate gas pipeline leaks in remote areas (deserts, etc) because buzzards were attracted to the smell and would circle overhead.
That's methyl mercaptan, also the simplest thiol. It also occurs naturally in blood, bad breath, feces, etc. at lower levels.
@@alienvomitsexso the phrase you smell like a corpse can actually be pretty accurate if it gets bad enough
I came home from school once and smelled it as I approached the back door. I didn’t know what was going on, but the smell was bad enough to send me to the neighbor’s house. They called my mom and the fire dept. Our gas heat had a malfunction and the house had been filling up with gas.
Your professor maybe never saw a desert before. Sometimes farms use sulfur to fertilize, which does not attract vultures either.
When a pipeline leaks here in the desert, the vultures would only notice if a pipeline worker was dead on the ground. Vultures don't smell for the death, they just smell like death!
I've experienced enough to differentiate between methyl mercaptan and a rotting human. Either way, the scent grabs your attention. One comes with more mental baggage.
What I am surprised me the most about this tragedy was not just that Adolf Hitlter expressed sorrows or was the fact that the gas companies and reporters pitched in to help. What really surprised me was that appropriate state action was taken much sooner rather than it takes these days.
Also, the fact that the smell of natural gas is actually mixed in by humans (the substance called Mercaptin though I may have misspelled that). I think it is appropriate that since the introduction of the chemical came after this horrible disaster, it should be called the smell of destruction
Nah, _Smell of Destruction_ was already taken as it is the title of your sex tape.
Mercaptans is correct - they're a group of hydrocarbons that have an attached extra sulfur and hydrogen atom. Even tiny amounts of these compounds stink, so it's added to warn of a gas leak. The tiny amounts are harmless in themselves - of course the main risk is the large amount of methane gas released in a leak....
I mean Hitler was a politician.
Remember when Castro died and, despite being one of the most evil bastards ever, got condolences from almost everybody? It's in the same vein.
Eh Hitler and America were on good terms for quite awhile. And not just because of the massive American Nazi party.
@@psyxypher3881, most of the world leaders know each other and some are even related behind the scenes. Most of them are not everymen but descendants of the aristocracies a few centuries back.
Thanks for covering this. My mother was in high school in East Texas at the time. She told us this story many times growing up. We also learned about it in school, along with the Texas City port explosion and the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston.
Strange how the worst industrial and natural disaster both occurred in the same county
@@Mr_Welch After the 1900 hurricane, Galveston built an enormous seawall, and backfilled it to raise the height of the entire island by 20 feet. Houses were put on jacks and soil added underneath. The next hurricane in 1919 they stood on top of the seawall and gave the middle finger to Mother Nature. You've never heard of the 1919 hurricane for a reason.
I appreciate you cover the tragedies that we hardly remember it today. Keep it up, @FascinatingHorror.
I really felt sorry for those kids who lost their lives from that terrible explosion. Those kids who survived, their lives will never be the same when they came back to school after the explosion.
I initially thought this was that one case in which a psycho planted explosives at a school but even that horrid incident was not even close to the magnitude of this one, is disturbing in a way that a man with the full intent of doing as much damage as possible did not come close to do as much harm as what simple incompetence did here. That case is btw the Bath School disaster.
It's exactly why we should be VERY CAREFUL about too quickly assigning blame over "malice" when ordinary clumsiness and incompetence are often the "source" of disaster. ;o)
You're thinking of Die Hard 3
That was the Bath School explosion in Michigan in 1927. I'm not sure it's been covered by Fascinating Horror (or at least, I can't find the video!) but there are a ton of videos on UA-cam about it if you do a search.
My cousin is actually a trained guide for the museum for this disaster! Last February I got to go and have a personal tour and hear the story, it was pretty amazing!
I am literally amazed at how much detail and content that fascinating horror can pump into a 10 minute video. One of my favorite channels.
This is one of the only channels where i watch the newest video when it comes out. Hands down my favorite YT channel. Please never stop.
I took care of a lady back in the late 90’s who was at this school when it blew up. I had never heard of it. I wish I remembered her name. I’m sure she is long gone, but amazing that she survived.
I love this channel. The care and detail given to researching the events, but the compassion is always for the victims.
And no hint of sensationalism in his voice either.... One of the best narrators for sensitive stories!
Wow, excellent job, Fascinating Horror! I am so glad that you covered this event on your channel. I have visited the New London Museum and it was a moving experience.
You know it’s bad when Hitler sends an apology card.
Yeah, I damn near sprayed Dr. Pepper all over my laptop when I heard that one. It's like, "Wait-- *that* genocidal f@^k-up sent his condolences!? What alternate dimension did *I* fall into?"
@@BennyLlama39 People forget that he was a generally respected world leader for a short while.
There is a saying that even evil has standards. Yes Adolf Hitler was mostly a horrible irredeemable monster but apparently even he had good qualities. For instance he was kind to most children albeit only those who weren’t Jewish or who didn’t belong to a group that Hitler hated and he was also apparently a vegetarian who was kind towards animals and made laws protecting animals such as forbidding the experimenting and abuse of animals and said that all animals were to be treated with respect. He also passed a law that controlled cigarette usage and even made anti smoking campaigns and even encouraged pregnant women to not smoke and banned smoking in public places and even beautified and modernized Germany and even wanted to make a modern Germany where a German could own a car and contribute to the modern world. However that still doesn’t undo or justify the horrible things that he did to millions of innocent people. He was a brutal dictator who brutally oppressed anyone who opposed him and even those who he deemed a threat to him and his rule even if they were completely innocent. In addition he was also a imfamous rabid racist and anti semite who brutally persecuted Jewish people and other minorities and denied them their rights. He then confined them into ghettos where they were forced to live in horrible conditions which ended up resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and then constructed concentration camps where many innocent people including over 1 million innocent Jewish people were killed. Then he ordered the construction of death camps like Auschwitz and ordered the mass killing of all Jewish people and other minorities either via shooting or gassing or other causes thus resulting in the deaths of millions of innocent people including 1.5 million innocent children. In addition he ordered the invasion of Poland which was one of the major causes of ww2 thus also making him responsible for the deaths of millions of other people.
Yeah I'm still trying to figure out what an appropriate reaction would be to that fact
@@BennyLlama39 I wasn't drinking anything but I had a WTF moment myself.
I'm from the UK but know Walter Cronkite from his work presenting the 90s TV show Dinosaur and various interviews related to Viet Nam, space travel, and politics. His take on the event was a worthy way to end. I felt a chill run through me. Horrific event.
One of the saddest facts is that there were only 30 surviving seniors in the graduating class. Since 500 died, students and staff, I’d guess that at least half of the Class of 1937 died. I’m assuming that the students in 5th-12th grades were in roughly equally sized grade levels. The town lost a large percentage of the generation aged 11-18 that day.
I heard 294 dead in total.
Only 294 students and teachers died that day. Still a very large part of the local population.
Reminds me of a phrase in construction “Every new rule that is passed is written in blood.”
There’s a play that has circled around the Texas theatre community based on these events. The play is titled ‘The Girl With The White Pinafore.’ Middle school & high school theatre programs in Texas have frequently performed it, so the story itself has seen an uptick in awareness. It’s a great play, & I cannot recommend it enough!
My daughter did a play on this story last year in her middle school.
I remember my first experience with gas. I had never dealt with it before and consequently knew nothing about it. I was helping out at a church on like a Tuesday morning and was washing dishes while the rest of the guys went out and started other various tasks. After awhile I had a headache and things smelled bad so I left. I went and found one of the priests/preachers(military base) and complained that the kitchen smelled of rotten eggs and was giving me a headache and could I open a window(I asked for permission because the A/C was on and it was rather hot out) for a bit to air out the smell. Next thing I know we're all outside and the fire department was swarming the church. It turns out a pilot light on the stove went out and gas was leaking. I was terrified of that sort of gas for years after that.
I vaguely remember hearing about this somewhere(maybe a grandparent?) but had no idea that this sad incident was responsible for making sure I was able to smell that leak nearly 8 decades later.
Gas pipes in a void beneath the floor?
You can tell where this one is going......
Interesyting that this was the event that led to something you could smell being added to gas. In retrospect it seems so obvious.
The smell is from a chemical called mercaptan which is ironically also toxic and flammable. The smell actually saved my entire family in the 1990s because at the time of the incident the local gas company had unknowingly install several defective seals in the connection from their meter into private homes. Because the gas meter is located outside, in most cases the leaked gas would had been dissipated, but in some cases the gas (being lighter than air) would enter and accumulate in the attics if there an overhanging eave. Had I not been outside near the gas meter that particular day and smelled the mercaptan, I would never had known because I would not had smelled it from inside the house and with my air conditioner and furnace in the attic, there would had been an explosion.
I grew up in Rusk County in the 1950s and was always fascinated by this tragedy. I discovered Hitler’s telegram in the local library and read whatever I could find, but the grownups would never talk about the explosion. It was as if it hadn’t happened; it was too painful to revisit. Only at the 50th anniversary in 1987 did the community finally acknowledge the pain and emotion, open up about the event, and begin to heal.
In the '70s I used to travel to New London to visit friends. It's hard to believe that such a small town had such a large high school. I researched New London then and discovered the explosion. The next time I went to New London, I tried to talk about it with my friends. They refused to talk about it. If I remember right, the father of my friends worked for Humble Oil.
I was one of the ones who requested this topic. This episode turned out even better than I imagined it would! Hell I even learned some new details I didn't know before! Thank you so much for shedding some light on this little known tragedy, it's one that has definitely stuck with me, ever since I learned about it as a kid growing up in East Texas. ❤
I remember hearing this vaguely years ago, like it somehow was just mentioned somewhere and I don’t recall where but this is a great overview of what happened. Keep up the great work man!
Same. At first I thought it was a reupload, but must have seen it on a different channel.
Edit: The channel "Well I Never" also covered this. Highly recommend!
You would think this was a random tragedy, but it turns out, it changed the world forever.
Excellent episode of a very horrific event in East Texas, thank you Sir!!!🙏😢🏫❣️
You definitely keep us engaged and bring attention to events alot of us never heard of.
Good on those reporters for choosing to help rather than gawp and pester the victims and their close ones!
I’m still processing the fact that Adolf Hitler sent his sympathies to the victims of this awful tragedy 😭
And it has to be a gas leak of all things
That's just something heads of state are supposed to do when relations are cordial. And at the time Adolf liked America due to a large amount of German immigrants in the country.
He was a nice guy at heart
this was before the war. Time awarded him the person of the year. Whatever he did during the war, you have to acknowledge what kind of a comeback Germany and its economy had after being destroyed during WWI
@@ThePointlessBox_ The only thing you have to acknowledge is that people fall for scummy politicians. Especially the journalists, and of course their fellow scummy politicians abroad.
OMG I've waited for this for so long thank you for covering this
This outstrips even Aberfan for sheer school horror, God bless all involved and thanks again FH. 🙏
I love your narrative and voice. Glad to see your channel is thriving.
Always a lesson to be learned. Your subtlety and discretion is a perfect tone for such awful details. I long for the next aprils fools.
Thank you for covering this as my late grandfather was a survivor of this tragedy and so little is ever mentioned of it.❤
I had no idea that this was why natural gas has an additive to make it smell. As usual, learning something from your channel!
Stumbled across this channel a couple months ago and been hooked ever since. Very informative, excellent narration, and eerily entertaining. Thanks!
The minute I heard that the sander was called "Old Sparky", I thought "this cannot bode well."
I have a relative who died in the explosion-Mary Bennet. My mom’s side of the family still live in or near Rusk County, and I visit nearby Henderson to see my Grandma several times a year. A few years ago I went to New London and found Mary’s name on the memorial statue they have there. She was 11 or 12 I believe.
As my Grandma tells it, supposedly Mary didn’t want to go to school that morning. She told her mom she didn’t feel good, but when asked if it was a stomachache or fever, she said she just had a “bad feeling”. She ended up having to go to school, and died in the explosion.
Thanks for sharing another interesting piece of history with us. Glad we learn from past mistakes and take precautions to avoid such tragedies from happening.
I'm so happy to see you finally covered this tragedy!! I live not too far from here and the museum is such a somber place, to see all of the little clothes that the kids were in when the explosion happened really put it into perspective. The tour guide is always someone that was there that day as a child and its so interesting to hear the story first hand.
If anyone is interested in knowing more about this disaster, I heavily recommend reading "Oh, My God! It's Our Children!", a Texas Monthly article published on March 2007. It contains many firsthand accounts of the disaster. Many accounts stood out to me, but one that got my heart wrenching was when a survivor got home from the bus, she was immediately barraged by around 8 mothers, screaming if she had seen their children. 6 out of the 8 mothers lost a kid in the disaster.
Some other accounts of the disaster included in the article:
1) A girl identifying her sister's remains through her shoes.
2) A boy describing his deceased friend's head as "flat as a newspaper."
3) A girl jumping from one of the floors, only to die via impalement through glass.
4) Upon her deathbed, the mother of one of the survivors said that she was surrounded by children, as if she were seeing the victims in the afterlife.
5) The most famous story of that of a boy by the name of Bill Thompson, who switched seats with a girl. Explosion ensues, killing the girl, but the boy survived. At the 40th anniversary of the explosion, wracked with guilt, he encounters the sister of the girl who died and asks for forgiveness.
You have little idea how long I've been waiting for you to make this video, Fascinating Horror.
Thank you for this. I found the article and it’s heartbreaking.
One of the saddest and most tragic stories I've ever heard. Thank you for sharing it with all of us.
How on earth did the school board _not_ get in trouble for illegally tapping into questionably-sourced gas??
I guess because the type of gas was an inferior quality, so the company didn't care and neither did anybody else.
That's the problem with telling reporters not to do their job. The US government determined there wasn't enough evidence left by the time they did their investigation.
Something about the intro music and your voice always settles me into a nice place even though what we get is horrific.
you know this accident is horrifying that even freaking Hitler himself sends condolences to America whom later became an enemy to Germany.
Well, Stalin probably didn't send anything, and yet you guys (assuming you're American) allied with that absolute monster. Great job.
@VideoDotGoogleDotCom Hitler thought the racists in America were too obvious, he wanted a more subtle master race model for Germans. The "American model" was too racist for Hitler. America is not the good guys.
@@VideoDotGoogleDotCom Yeah I'm stupid and forgot basic history. But still - it's the policy of war. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least until war ends.
I lived 15 minutes away from New London until just recently. They still remember and still grieve.
My mother was seven years old when this happened. She lived in a town close to New London and remembers this very well.
Thanks!
It's so sad that there was no immediate way of warning everyone within the school about the danger of the gas leak and explosion. Thanks once again to FH for highlighting another tragedy I'd never heard of
You find the most incredible stories. Fabulous video as always.Thank you.
I had multiple gas leaks in my house last year, and I only knew because of the smell. I remember it smelling like a mixture of skunk, farts, and a chemical smell. I called the gas company, and they came out with the gas detecting machine. On the initial walkthrough, he didn't pick up any traces of gas. So he waited for the hot water furnace to recycle and walked through again. He found two very small leaks and shut the gas off. The leaks were repaired in a few days and the gas was turned back on. For multiple weeks after that, I kept smelling something repeatedly. I called the gas company out and they found nothing. I felt embarrassed for being paranoid. Well, I kept smelling the same odor, so I called them out again. They ended up finding a bunch of small gas leaks throughout all of the piping. They had to replace all of the gas piping and the furnace. Still to this day, I have panic attacks when I think I smell something weird in my house, even though I know it has all be repaired and replaced. I am on medication and go to therapy, but this experience gave me very severe anxiety about gas leaks in my house. I am just grateful they were small leaks, and nothing like the New London School explosion. It was still absolutely terrifying, and I highly recommend people get a carbon monoxide detector and know what gas smells like.
I’m from Texas and never heard of this story. I appreciate your content. This is so sad :(
The Walter Cronkite footnote was excellent. Sad but interesting story.
sad story. Thank you for sharing it with us. Congratulations on Reaching 1 million Subscribers.
This is one that sticks out at me, and it makes me wonder how often this can happen around the world even nowadays, I mean there was a similar leak and blast in 1992 or 1993 as well, then you had the Hutchinson blasts in 2001 though, and the 1942 East Cleveland explosions though
Yeah the 1942 East Cleveland explosions is a disaster you don't hear too much about if at all.
Last year I myself heard a building that exploded from a gas leak 2.4km away from the blast. That was in Calle 54, Obarrio here in Panams
Every Fall, at least 1 house explodes in Saint Louis when ppl turn on their furnace for the first time.
RM Palmer Candy Company explosion in West Reading, PA this year is another example. Many workers reported smelling a foul odor and yet the facility wasn't immediately evacuated. Several people were killed.
PG&E's San Bruno explosion...
I just finished listening to Disastrous History’s old episode on this and it’s really fascinating the different things you both focus on. I absolutely adore your videos I just thought it was a funny coincidence.
I had just yesterday, whilst changing the tanks on my forklift (not mine personally, mind you) wondered what the catalyst for adding the noxious odor to propane might be.
And now I know
I was cooking dinner as I was listening to this, and just as the topic of parents fighting to see the bodies, my father came up to say something, and when I tuned back in, the first thing I heard was a name that made me double check what video I had open to begin with. It's not every day that a certain moustached man gets mentioned outside of a certain few contexts.
You should cover the Bath City School explosion!
Yeah mass killing at school is nothing new.
As a former Bath, Michigan resident, I second this suggestion.
Holy fuck.
That's not an accident, that's a terrorist act. I don't think this channel covers terrorist acts.
300 children...wtf
I had heard of this before but not in such detail. Thank you for this.
News reporters on the scene stopped reporting and started to help in rescue and recovery. Fat chance of that happening today.
Explains why no one was held accountable for this preventable disaster
It actually has continued to happen.
I knew a man who was there as a young boy (not a student) his father assisted with the rescue efforts. It left a serious mark on his young mind.
RIP to all the 295 people lost. Another video I would suggest you should do. Is the 1908 Collinwood fire that happened in Ohio
Silly notion unrelated to the topic at hand but, of all true horror/crime channels I watch (near a hundred at this point), this narrator is by far my favourite one.
I can relate to the kid that heard his name listed as one of the deceased. I "died" in a car accident when I was still in high school. There was an actual fatal accident that had occurred and the car involved just happened to be the same make, model and color of the car I owned at the time. It spread to my entire school that it was me so you can imagine the shock that a lot were in when I showed up to class on Monday morning. 😆
Hey, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your podcast, they are definitely my favourite and I recommend them to everyone. I respect and admire the wonderful way, you tell these stories on behalf of the victims. Please continue with your channel, I’m your number 1, superfan from Australia 💛💛💛
For further information about this tragedy, I highly recommend "Gone at 3:17, the Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History," by David M. Brown and Michael Wereschagin.
A book or a film?
A book.
@@seriouscat2231 I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. It is a book.
I went to school in Rusk County as a kid, and we visited the museum in around 2004 or 05. I have always remembered the story of a kid who had cut class that morning but was caught by his dad and sent back to school only to die in the explosion. I think his name was Perry Lee Cox if I remember correctly
Curious, how did they determine how it was “old sparky” as the start of the fire?
That added smell in the gas has also saved me. I've trained myself to quickly react if I ever smell it since I was a kid, when a small gas leak happened in our school kitchen, and we were quickly evacuated. That smell that many people consider awful has saved many lives.
I've been to the cemetery where most of the kids are buried..it's very sobering to see so many of the same date of death...and so many so young.
Was not expecting the Hitler cameo lol
Wow, thanks for covering this tragedy!
My great aunt worked at that school. I used to hear stories about the explosion when she was alive. On the day of the explosion, she took ill and did not go into work. It was terrifying to hear the story as a young boy, and terrifying now to learn more about it.
wow never thought id see a doc on this!! i lived in Overton and Henderson, two towns less than 10 minutes drive and people still talk about the tragedy when we pass the school. there is also the Depo Museum, which as some history there about the students
Excellent job as always FH
I grew up in the area and vaguely recall the memorials held on the 50th anniversary. I have never forgotten the school trip out there when I was an elementary student. Listening to the stories from the people who were there or lost loved ones was indescribable. The oil boom brought a lot of prosperity and good fortune to the area around that time which made it all the more devastating. But we still remember and mourn for those lost and affected.