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The Green Hornet Street Car Disaster
- Narrated by: Chaz Allen
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's summary
As rush hour came to a close on the evening of May 25, 1950, one of Chicago’s new, fast, colorful, streamlined streetcars - known as a Green Hornet - slammed into a gas truck at State Street and 62nd Place. The Hornet’s motorman allegedly failed to heed the warnings of a flagger attempting to route it around a flooded underpass, and the trolley, packed with commuters on their way home, barreled into 8,000 gallons of gasoline.
The gas erupted into flames, poured onto State Street, and quickly engulfed the Hornet, shooting flames two 250 feet into the air. More than half of the passengers escaped the inferno through the rear window, but 33 others perished, trapped in front of the streetcar’s back door which failed to stay open in the ensuing panic. It was Chicago’s worst traffic accident ever and the worst two-vehicle traffic accident in the US history.
The Green Hornet Streetcar Disaster tells the riveting tale of this calamity. Combing through newspaper accounts as well as the Chicago Transit Authority’s official archives, Craig Cleve vividly brings to life this horrific catastrophe. Going beyond the historical record, he tracks down individuals who were present on that fateful day on State and 62nd: eyewitnesses, journalists, and even survivors whose lives were forever changed by the accident.
Cleve reveals the remarkable combination of natural events, human error, and mechanical failure that led to the disaster, and this moving history recounts them - as well as the conflagration’s human drama - in gripping detail.
The book is published by Northern Illinois University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
“A compelling story about a long forgotten tragedy.” (Rick Kogan, author of Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago)
"A fascinating account of one of Chicago’s greatest disasters." (David M. Young, author of Chicago Transit: An Illustrated History)
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- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Wire, the “utterly absorbing” (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America’s bustling cities - rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality - from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin.
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Forty Years Ago or Yesterday?
- By Anka on 07-20-20
By: Nicholas Griffin
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Southern Storm
- The Tragedy of Flight 242
- By: Samme Chittum
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard. The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying 81 passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope.
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Compelling read.
- By teri on 06-19-18
By: Samme Chittum
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The Esperanza Fire
- Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine 57
- By: John N. Maclean
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Esperanza Fire started October 26, 2006, in the San Jacinto Mountains above the Banning Pass near Cabazon, California. It destroyed 41,000 acres and dozens of homes and cost the taxpayers $16 million dollars. But by far the highest costs of the conflagration were the lives of the five-man crew of Engine 57, the first engine crew ever killed fighting a wildland blaze. Fire and superheated gases had erupted in a freak "area ignition," sending flames racing across three-quarters of a mile in mere seconds, engulfing the crew and the house they were defending.
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Read the "book reviews" on Amazon before judging.
- By IdyGal on 08-26-18
By: John N. Maclean
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To Sleep with the Angels
- The Story of a Fire
- By: David Cowan, John Kuenster
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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If burying a child has a special poignancy, the tragedy at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago more than 50 years ago was an extraordinary moment of grief. One of the deadliest fires in American history, it took the lives of 92 children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School, left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, and destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood.
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amazingly gripping
- By Jeremiah Rubottom on 10-12-18
By: David Cowan, and others
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Faster
- How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, three misfits banded together to challenge Hitler’s dominance at the apex of motorsport: the Grand Prix. Their quest for redemption culminated in a remarkable race that is still talked about in racing circles to this day - but which, soon after it ended, Hitler attempted to completely erase from history.
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Almost perfect, but lousy sound cuts and splicing
- By F. on 06-08-20
By: Neal Bascomb
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Chicago's Great Fire
- The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City
- By: Carl Smith
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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From an acclaimed historian, the full and authoritative story of one of the most iconic disasters in American history, told through the vivid memories of those who experienced it. Carl Smith’s compelling narrative at last gives this epic event its full and proper place in our national chronicle.
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Fairly good
- By Jennett M. Harrell on 07-24-24
By: Carl Smith
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Storm of the Century
- The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935
- By: Willie Drye
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1934, hundreds of jobless World War I veterans were sent to the remote Florida Keys to build a highway from Miami to Key West. The Roosevelt Administration was making a genuine effort to help these down-and-out vets. But the attempt to help them turned into a tragedy. The supervisors in charge of the veterans misunderstood the danger posed by hurricanes in the low-lying Florida Keys. The hurricane that struck the Upper Florida Keys on the evening of September 2, 1935, is still the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the US.
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Better than I expected
- By Jennifer Camp on 07-23-24
By: Willie Drye
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Idaho Falls
- The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident
- By: William McKeown
- Narrated by: Bob Dunsworth
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When asked to name the world’s first major nuclear accident, most people cite the Three Mile Island incident or the Chernobyl disaster. Revealed in this book is one of American history’s best-kept secrets: the world’s first nuclear reactor accident to claim fatalities happened on United States soil. Chronicled here for the first time is the strange tale of SL-1, a military test reactor located in Idaho’s Lost River Desert that exploded on the night of January 3, 1961, killing the three-man maintenance crew on duty.
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A Really Good, but Dreadfully Written Book
- By Matthew on 03-08-17
By: William McKeown
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Midnight in Chernobyl
- By: Adam Higginbotham
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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April 25, 1986 in Chernobyl was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.
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Midnight in Chernobyl is the book to listen to.
- By NH on 03-21-19
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Triangle
- The Fire That Changed America
- By: David Von Drehle
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. It was the worst disaster in New York City history.
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Interesting but Loong
- By JAS on 04-21-18
By: David Von Drehle
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The Circus Fire
- A True Story of an American Tragedy
- By: Stewart O'Nan
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1944, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford caught fire during the middle of an afternoon performance. Nine thousand people were inside. In seconds, the big top was burning out of control. The toll of the fire, and its circumstances, haunt Hartford to the present day. But it is the intense, detailed narrative - before, after, and especially during the panic under the burning tent - that will remain with listeners long after they finish this book.
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Harrowing and brilliantly detailed
- By P. M. Morris on 09-14-08
By: Stewart O'Nan
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The Great Halifax Explosion
- A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism
- By: John U. Bacon
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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From best-selling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima. On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship, including 2,300 tons of picric acid, an unstable, poisonous chemical more powerful than TNT.
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Too much hostility towards Americans
- By bigdaddyKT on 12-14-19
By: John U. Bacon