2019 Kohistan mine collapse
On 6 January 2019, it was reported that a mine shaft in the Kohistan District of Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan had collapsed, killing 30 people. The makeshift shaft was reportedly being used to mine gold. Afghan government sources noted that the mining operation was unregulated and illegal, and that most of the miners were local villagers trying to supplement their incomes through rudimentary gold mining.
Graniteville train crash
The Graniteville train crash was an American rail disaster that occurred on January 6, 2005, in Graniteville, South Carolina. At roughly 2:40 am EST, two Norfolk Southern trains collided near the Avondale Mills plant in Graniteville. Nine people were killed and over 250 people were treated for toxic chlorine exposure. The accident was determined to be caused by a misaligned railroad switch.
Burj Khalifa construction started
The Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is the world's tallest building. With a total height of 829.8 m (2,722 ft, or just over half a mile) and a roof height (excluding antenna, but including a 242.6 m spire) of 828 m (2,717 ft), the Burj Khalifa has been the tallest structure and building in the world since its topping out in 2009, supplanting Taipei 101, the previous holder of that status.
Continental drift theory presented
Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere. The speculation that continents might have "drifted" was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. A pioneer of the modern view of mobilism was the Austrian geologist Otto Ampferer. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in his 1915 publication, "The Origin of Continents and Oceans".
Night of the Big Wind
The Night of the Big Wind was a powerful European windstorm that swept across what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, beginning on the afternoon of 6 January 1839, causing severe damage to property and several hundred deaths. 20 to 25% of houses in north Dublin were damaged or destroyed, and 42 ships were wrecked. At the time, it was the worst storm to hit Ireland for 300 years. Liverpool also suffered severely, with many shipwrecks and much structural damage. 120 people died as a result of such accidents in the city alone. Two major shipwrecks resulted in damage of at least £500,000, equivalent to £47,000,000 in 2021.
