Military Disasters

It begins as a school trip to London. But with a sudden tidal surge and a dramatic thunderstorm that hurls rainwater down on the capital, it suddenly becomes something totally different: the site of a major disaster as the Thames Barrier is breached and London is flooded. With streets underwater, communications down, rats pouring up out of the sewers, and thousands of people in a state of panic, survival becomes a very key issue for Ben and his mates.

There is a popular saying that declares "timing is everything", and in no other field of study is that truer than in history. For instance, under normal conditions, a ship that sank with more than 2,000 passengers aboard - most of whom died - would be big news, yet today the sinking of the SS Sultana is often overlooked if not entirely forgotten.

In World War II, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were killed across the world, whether in Japanese jungles, North African deserts, or European beaches. Given that backdrop and the sheer magnitude of the war, people understandably became desensitized to incidents and tragedies that cost hundreds of lives. This was undoubtedly the case with the notorious Port Chicago disaster, a munitions explosion in July 1944 that killed over 300 people and injured over 300 more, many of them navy sailors.

Luego de la Guerra de Indochina a comienzos de los años 50, Vietnam quedó dividida en dos: La del Norte, apoyada por comunistas, y la del sur, por los capitalistas. El empuje ideológico de la primera, y las difíciles relaciones con la URSS a causa de la Guerra Fría, llevaron a Estados Unidos a invadir Vietnam del Sur para enfrentar al Vietcong, la guerrilla comunista financiada por Ho Chi Minh.

A comienzos del siglo III a. de C., el Mediterráneo era testigo de la existencia de dos extraordinarias potencias: Cartago y Roma. Tras la espectacular expansión del segundo y su victoria en la primera guerra púnica, surgió la definitiva rivalidad entre ambos, la cual estalló militarmente otra vez en el 218 a. de C, cuando una de las figuras militares más importantes de todos los tiempos, el gran Aníbal, cruza los Alpes y ataca a Roma desde su propio territorio.

His mission was top secret: deliver mysterious components of some superweapon that would end this awful war to the island of Tinian, then return to the fleet to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Little did Captain Charles McVay III know that he would survive his ship's sinking, shark attacks, starvation, and five days adrift in the Pacific Ocean before being rescued. Discover this untold story of Captain McVay and his amazing men of courage: the crew of the USS Indianapolis.