1996 Channel Tunnel fire
The 1996 Channel Tunnel fire of 18 November 1996 occurred on a train carrying Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) and their drivers through the Channel Tunnel from France to the United Kingdom (UK). The fire was seen on the train as it entered the tunnel and, in line with the policy at the time, an attempt was made to drive to the UK where the fire would be dealt with. However, after an indication of a serious problem with the train, the driver stopped at 21:58 CET, 19 kilometres (12 mi) into the tunnel. Firefighters fought the fire overnight, and it was declared out at 11:15 the following morning. The fire damaged about 500 metres (1,600 ft) of tunnel.
King's Cross fire
The King's Cross fire was a fire in 1987 at a London Underground station with 31 fatalities, after a fire under a wooden escalator suddenly spread into the underground ticket hall in a flashover, killing 31 people and injuring 100. A public inquiry was conducted from February to June 1988. Investigators reproduced the fire twice, once to determine whether grease under the escalator was ignitable, and the other to determine whether a computer simulation of the fire-which would have determined the cause of the flashover-was accurate. The inquiry determined that the fire had been started by a lit match being dropped onto the escalator.
1929 Grand Banks earthquake
The 1929 Grand Banks earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.2 and a maximum Rossi-Forel intensity of VI (Strong tremor) and was centered in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Laurentian Slope Seismic Zone. The quake, along two faults 250 kilometres (160 mi) south of the Burin Peninsula, triggered a large submarine landslide displacing (200 km3 or 48 cu mi). It snapped 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and led to a tsunami that arrived in three waves. Newfoundland, Canada and Saint Pierre and Miquelon had the largest impact, both from the snapped 12 submarine cables, and the tsunami. This was Canada's largest submarine landslide ever recorded, up to 500 times the size of 1894 Saint-Alban subaerial slide.
1867 Virgin Islands earthquake and tsunami
The 1867 Virgin Islands earthquake and tsunami occurred on November 18, at 14.45 in the Anegada Passage about 20 km southwest of Saint Thomas, Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands). The Ms 7.5 earthquake came just 20 days after the devastating San Narciso Hurricane in the same region. Tsunamis from this earthquake were some of the highest ever recorded in the Lesser Antilles. Wave heights exceeded 10 m (33 ft) in some islands in the Lesser Antilles. The earthquake and tsunami resulted in no more than 50 fatalities, although casualties in the hundreds is also claimed.
William Jessop died
William Jessop was an English civil engineer, best known for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first major work that Jessop is known to have carried out was the Grand Canal of Ireland. This had begun as a Government project in 1753, and it had taken seventeen years to build fourteen miles (21 km) of canal from the Dublin end.
