When the Silver Bridge collapsed during the rush hour, at just after 5 pm, on 15 Dec 1967, it had stood for 39 years before failing catastrophically in almost just an instant. It took 46 people down to their deaths.
Since 1928 it had bridged the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Kanauga, Ohio. The Silver Bridge was constructed with a novel form of suspension. Instead of the customary wire cables, the deck was supported from a chain of long, linked eye-bars, somewhat resembling the essential form of an elongated bicyle chain.
The disaster immediately posed the question “Why?” In the following months, pieces of the bridge were retrieved from the river’s fast-flowing water. A failure of one the eyes in the dogbone-shaped eye-bars was discovered. To which the question, “Why?” was asked again.
This documentary video provides an engineering analysis. After historical footage introducing the origins of the bridge, this instructive video discusses the suspected four factors which acted together on the cold December day, with a heavy traffic load, a suspension chain with no redundancy in the design, and a sudden failure at a stress crack.
The dramatic loss of life spurred a federal bridge safety inspection program.
Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)
Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)
Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)