Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History

by Andrew Carroll

Many national tragedies have been similarly overshadowed. Three years before the Sultana blew up, an explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh killed 78 workers, mostly women. It was the worst loss of civilian life during the Civil War but was nevertheless relegated to a historical footnote because it occurred on September 17, 1862, which was also the date of Antietam, the war’s bloodiest one-day battle. On October 8, 1871, a firestorm swept through rural Peshtigo, Wisconsin, incinerating upward of 2,500 men, women, and children. Peshtigo almost certainly would be better remembered had Chicago not suffered its “Great Fire,” which left 200 to 300 people dead, that very same day. And more recently, when American Airlines Flight 587 plummeted from the sky into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, New York, killing all 260 on board and 5 on the ground, it was our country’s second-deadliest airline disaster. But because it happened on November 12, 2001, when the nation was petrified by anthrax-laced mail and a possible second wave of strikes following the September 11 attacks, there was almost relief that the crash was due to pilot error and not sabotage.