Only a small number of nuclear mishaps may be readily recalled by the majority of individuals. There haven't exactly been hundreds of them, but the most well-known ones include Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. Would Santa Susana, however, be on your list? The majority of people wouldn't, but they ought to because the Santa Susana Field Lab, a sizable experimental research site situated dangerously close to Los Angeles, had its own nuclear catastrophe in 1959.

Even when the event became widely known in 1979, very little media attention was given to it, so most people paid little attention. Radioactive vapors were being released because a reactor core overheated. Before it was turned off, it continued doing this for ten days. 1,465 degrees Fahrenheit was the high. At various times, three other reactors also experienced incidents. Furthermore, none of them had containment systems.

A physicist who was employed there saw radioactive materials released. Even worse, he saw someone drop nuclear waste into open pits where it would be burned. However, as complexes were being erected on potentially contaminated surrounding land, officials lied about what had occurred for years. Many local residents have health issues that could be related to the poisoning.

Despite a 2010 commitment for cleanup to be completed by 2017, the property has still not been cleaned up. The Department of Energy, NASA, and Boeing—all of which did research there—have argued that the location isn't particularly hazardous and that cleaning it up would be too difficult.

• Year: 1959

• Damage: widespread radioactive and toxic chemical contamination

The tragic legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre is that history has been so successfully suppressed that the only way we can learn about it is through comic comics. Most people would never have known it was a true occurrence if it weren't for HBO's Watchmen adaption. The program portrayed the incidents that led to several articles being written and published after the fact to confirm that yes, this really did happen.

The presence of the Ku Klux Klan and the trial of a 19-year-old Black man who was accused of attempting to sexually assault a 17-year-old White girl provoked a large riot in Tulsa in 1921. Soon, groups of white men started setting Black-owned businesses on fire and randomly shooting Black people. According to estimates, 300 Black people died.

The records of what had happened then disappeared. There were no records of the National Guard being called in. Police seized photographic evidence. For many years, local newspapers ignored it, and until the 1970s, anyone attempting to conduct study on it faced danger. Even the wording was cleaned up; instead of being called a slaughter, it was called a "riot" for years.

Not until the Oklahoma City Bombing brought reporters to the region and oral histories of the locals started to be documented in the 1990s did knowledge of what happened start to circulate once more.

• Year: 1921

• Damage: at least 300 Black people died

The association between head injuries and football players is now generally acknowledged. One study discovered brain damage in up to 40% of former athletes. Each season, 140 concussions occur. This appears to be a major thing, and it is, but the NFL made a concerted effort to keep the public in the dark about it for many years.

After conducting an autopsy on a player, the doctor who made the initial connection between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy was attacked by the league and his work was criticized as being subpar science. They willfully ignored the risk to their own players while publishing their own research with faulty data, downplaying the seriousness of injuries. The league had left out information on 100 concussions from its records, according to The New York Times.

The league gave millions to the National Institutes of Health's brain research to save face when they failed to make the material disappear, but they were soon charged with attempting to sway the study. As a result, a $16 million donation was turned down by the NIH. They then added millions more to research for medical and equipment. However, a 2017 study of 111 deceased NFL players' autopsy found 110 of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

• Year: 2009

• Damage: Brain damage happens in 40% of former athletes

The Combat of May Island, which wasn't really a battle at all but rather a sequence of incidents, was long forgotten from history despite the fact that it resulted in over 100 sailors dying during the First World War.

Near the Isle of May, Australian and Royal Navy ships were engaged in training.

Mist made it difficult to see, and communication problems caused some spacecraft to lose sight of one another. Nobody was aware that minesweepers were in the area, and the minesweepers were unaware that an exercise was going on. By the time it was all through, five collisions involving eight ships had occurred. Some sank with no survivors, while others had significant crew losses. 105 guys perished in total.

The incident had to be addressed in 1994 after surveyors discovered the wrecks of two warships, since all documents had been sealed during the war but had remained sealed afterward.

• Year: 1918

• Damage: 105 people died

In the UK, 1943 saw the greatest number of civilian fatalities during World War II. When an air raid siren sounded, locals hurried to the Bethnal Green tube station, as they frequently did in the past. Now that it was routine, the majority of individuals knew what to do. However, this time was unique. 1,500 residents rushed to the bunker when the sirens sounded at 20:17 GMT on March 3; however, even though the raids were predicted, no one was on duty and only one door was open.

The surrounding Victoria Park's new anti-aircraft guns' roars were mistaken for enemy bombs, and the throng rushed forward in fear. People mistook the new anti-aircraft gun fire for explosives detonating. People rushed inside the station through the only open door in a hurry, trampling over others as they did so. 173 individuals were trampled in the melee. Most of them asphyxiated to death, and the majority were women and children.

According to early indications, hostile fire may have hit the tube station. Officials had assumed the raid would proceed as expected, but the testing of new firearms produced chaos. For 34 years, the truth remained a secret.

• Year: 1943

• Damage: 173 people died

Although it might seem impossible to conceal a nuclear disaster, as we witnessed with Chernobyl, individuals do try. It was the same with the UK's Windscale catastrophe. In a reactor's core where plutonium was being produced, a fire started in 1957. Everything was guarded and secured.

The 16-hour fire produced poisonous smoke that was released into the environment. The government hid the true scope of what occurred, not even for the ostensible benefit of the populace, but rather out of concern for the impact it might have on relations with the United States.

They waited 40 years without mounting a cleaning since the technology to do so didn't exist. The plutonium was then retrieved and moved by robots that were sent beneath the floodwaters that had swamped the area.

• Year: 1957
• Damage: worst nuclear accident in the United Kingdom's history(ranked in severity at level 5 out of a possible 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale)

Even though it occurred earlier, consider this Hillsborough 2.0 because many of the same police were implicated. Instead of football fans this time, it was miners. 6,000 police engaged in violent altercations with striking miners in 1984. 95 miners were detained, however the legal charges collapsed for lack of supporting evidence. Later, police would come forward and say they either fabricated or withheld proof of the miners' conduct.

It was well known that police had maliciously punished miners for committing basically no crimes other than picketing and had used disproportionate force. 39 of the miners received payments totaling £425,000 for accusations of malicious prosecution, assault, and other offenses after police accused them of rioting. But the police never acknowledged any misconduct.

Police who testified later in the Hillsborough probe claimed they were instructed to sign pre-written statements rather than write their own. Many of the police lied during the trial as well, repeating a deception they'd made in the Hillsborough case five years later.

• Year: 1984
• Damage: 6,000 police engaged in violent altercations with striking miners

It is impossible to obtain information from North Korea, thus it is understandable that the details of the Ryongchon accident are vague. According to one source, 10,000 homes were devastated, and 150 people perished. At first, the Red Cross reported 54 deaths whereas South Korean reports reported 3,000. The explanation for everything was also vague.

Around 13:00 local time, flammable goods exploded at Ryongchon Station, causing a calamity (04:00 GMT) Possibly two gasoline trains collided. But the Red Cross claimed that explosives, not fuel, were being transported by the trains. And according to one account, electricity cables rather than a collision were to blame when they collapsed on a train hauling ammunition.

An assassination attempt on Kim Jong-il, who had been in the vicinity, according to a former US ambassador to South Korea. Shortly after the occurrence, the nation switched off the phone lines, preventing any further information from spreading, and the incident is still as clear as we have described it.

• Year:2004
• Damage: remains vague

Despite being the "worst loss of life involving a ship at sea in US Navy history," the story of the USS Indianapolis is not one that is frequently repeated (with the exception of in the movie Jaws). This is in part due to the Navy's efforts to hide what transpired.

As part of a top-secret mission, the Indianapolis was transporting the components of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Clearly, that portion was successful. But something went wrong on the way back. A Japanese submarine torpedoed the ship while it was sailing toward the Philippines. Of the 1,197 crew members, 300 perished along with the ship. Only 316 of those who were left made it back home.

Since the sinking happened quickly, few lifeboats were used. Many people in the water were burnt, hurt, and unable to remain afloat. The waves were 12 feet high. Men either died of hypothermia at night or drying out throughout the day. Sharks were attracted to the blood, thousands of them.

Due to the Navy's failure to recognize that the boat was missing, the men remained in the ocean for four days. Three SOS calls were placed and answered, but the Navy disregarded them—in one instance, because the responding officer was intoxicated. They were discovered by a chance plane.

The captain was court-martialed and placed on trial for the disaster. He struggled for years with the guilt, eventually killing himself, but was later cleared when the truth about the captain's innocence was revealed by a sixth-history grader's project.

• Year: 1945
• Damage: only 316 survivors

In what became known as the Hillsborough Disaster, 96 football (or soccer, for Americans) supporters were killed in 1989. Standing pens were overcrowded with Liverpool supporters who were crushed to death since there was not enough room for everyone to fit. Six police officers were charged in 2017 but not found guilty for their roles in the deaths and subsequent cover-up.

Just before the game started, there was a gathering outside the stadium, and authorities opened a gate to let that crowd into the already packed pen inside. In addition to the deaths, hundreds of others were hurt during the crush of humanity. In 2021, a guy who at the time had significant brain damage died and was added to the list as the 97th casualty.

After the incident, authorities made a deliberate effort to alter the narrative and shift the blame elsewhere. They destroyed the day's notes and placed the blame on the fans. Documents that had been altered claimed that supporters had attacked, defecated on, and picked pocketed deceased police. None of what they claimed about the fans—that they were inebriated and shoved their way in—was accurate. Though no specifics have been made public since 2021, the police agreed to settle with 600 of the victims.

• Year: 1989
• Damage: 97th casualty