There are countless sites on the Internet that celebrate mankind's technological successes. The Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, Apollo astronauts walking on the moon, the mapping of the human genome. Each event given volumes of praise, as well it should. Distinguished events in engineering, this is applied science in its finest hour.

1628. The Regalskeppet Vasa, a Swedish 64-gun warship. The good ship sunk, taking 30 crew members with her, less than one mile into her maiden voyage. (In calm seas, no less!) All because someone had the bright idea to build in two sets of gundecks - one of them too low - allowing the ship to become swamped. The fact that the King of Sweden was the one with that bright idea in the first place didn't stop the furious monarch from trying to find someone else to blame for the gaffe.

1879. Tay Rail Bridge, Scotland. Shortly after its completion, the bridge's designer, one Thomas Bouch, received a knighthood for his contribution to British transportation. I'm guessing that Queen Victoria later regretted that decision. The bridge gave many clues to its impending doom, including reports by a bridge inspector that the structure made unusual chattering sounds. These clues were ignored. Then, during a storm, several cast iron bridge supports failed, causing the bridge to collapse under the weight of a train that was in the process of crossing it. More than 75 perished. The conclusion of the post-disaster inquiry found that the the bridge was "badly designed, badly built and badly maintained, and that its downfall was due to inherent defects in the structure." Duh.

1912. The RMS Titanic, North Atlantic Ocean. The stuff of legends (and a few melodramatic motion pictures), this disaster served as the epitome of engineering arrogance and denial. The "unsinkable" went down like a safe full of nickles, leaving 1500 to drown. Why? Because nobody who designed, built, owned, promoted, or otherwise had anything to do with the ship wanted to consider the possibility that it just might end up in Davey Jones' Locker. That the ship had a grossly insufficient number of lifeboats was in itself ample evidence that nobody connected with the ship was concerned with a possible disaster at sea.

1928. St. Francis Dam, near Los Angeles, CA. Designed by former ditch-digger-turned-self-taught engineer William Mulholland, the construction of this dam underwent numerous in-process modifications, each time calling for a bigger structure capable of increasing the capacity of reservoir water. Upon its completion in 1926, the supersized dam (built on a foundation of unstable rock) soon started showing numerous cracks and fissures, all dismissed by Mulholland as "normal." On the night of March 12, 1928, just hours after its latest thumbs-up inspection by the grade-school-educated Mulholland, the dam collapsed, sending a torrent of water and debris that killed more than 600 people. After a Coroner's Inquest that layed blame on Mulholland and a lack of governmental oversight, Mulholland lived out his remaining years in seclusion.

1937. Explosion of the LZ 129 Hindenberg, Manchester, New Jersey. Thirty-six people on board died in the blimp inferno. Was it the explosive hydrogen gas used in the dirigible's envelope, or perhaps the incendiary cellulose-and-metal-oxide paint used on the hull? Was it sparked by a electrostatic discharge between the fuselage and the mooring tower, or was it struck by lightning? Take your pick of theories. "Oh, the humanity!" Oh, what a spectacular screw-up.

1940. Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Puget Sound, Washington. Apparently, the designers of this bridge had never picked up a guitar or violin. Ignoring the phenomena of standing wave harmonics (a subject well-known to any freshman physics or music student), the engineers chose instead to build this one on the cheap, creating an unwieldy structure cursed with a constant oscillation that pitched the roadway right and left. Think 2800 feet of concrete roadway doing "The Wave," and you'll get the picture. On the day of its demise, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge twisted back and forth 45 degrees from horizontal, then snapping, taking with it one car and a dog when it finally collapsed. The car's driver was fortunate to escape the bridge moments before it went into the drink; indeed, no human lives were lost, though the dog didn't fare so well. Even better was the fact that this failure was caught on film, providing amusing entertainment and education for generations of engineering and science students.

1947. Texas City, Texas ship explosion. A ship holding 17 million pounds of ammonium nitrate detonated after a fire had broken out onboard. But wait...that's not all. The ship's cargo hold also included a large shipment of ammunition, which also cooked off in the conflagration. During loading of the nitrate, longshoremen commented that the paper sacks of chemical felt warm to the touch. Yikes. The blast, which was detected by seismologists as far away as Denver (leading them to believe it was a nuclear blast), killed 581 people and injured over 5,000. To fully appreciate the magnitude of this explosion, note that it involved an amount of ammonium nitrate 3,400 times greater than that employed by Timothy McVey to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Investigators believe that the fire that sparked the explosion was caused either by spontaneous combustion, or a careless smoker.

1947. Howard Hughes' H-4 Hercules, the Spruce Goose, Long Beach, California. Eight turboprop engines, a wingspan of 319 feet, a maximum altitude of 70 feet and cruising range of 5000 feet...and built almost entirely from wood. What the hell was he thinking?!!

1958-1960. Ford Edsel. More of a marketing failure than an engineering one, though the car was widely criticized as being poorly designed and unreliable in an era of rock-solid automobiles. Moreover, this model became the first of many instances where Ford Motor Company (and U.S. automakers in general) turned out design, safety, and marketing failures. Nearly a half-century later, Detroit's Big Three haven't advanced much in any of those areas. They still don't get it.

1960s. Lawn Darts. Imagine a toy with 12-inch plastic fins and a quarter-pound hardened steel point that can be used as a fun backyard projectile by people with the intellect of Beavis & Butthead. Now imagine one of these whacking you point-first in the noggin. Behold the game of Lawn Darts, AKA "Jarts." Banned in the U.S. in the 1980s (yes, it took two decades and a few deaths for this to happen).

1973. Firestone 500 radial tires. Not to be outdone by rivals Michelin and Goodrich, Firestone rushed to get its own steel-belted radial tires to market. The ill-fated "Firestone 500" had a penchant for belt separation, due to water seepage that caused the steel belts to rust and ultimately fail at high speeds. After 30-plus fatalities, Firestone reluctantly recalled hundreds of thousands of the defective tires, proceeded to stonewall the NTHSA, and then blamed consumers for the problems. After getting severly kicked to the curb by Congress in 1978 (not to mention being the brunt of years of bad press, and forced to recall another 14.5 million defective tires), the limping Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was eventually bought by Bridgestone at a fire-sale price. (But just you wait, kids -- Bridgestone/Firestone would put their heads together to bring us even more exploding tire problems a couple decades later.) This whole disastrous story is still used to this day as a learning tool at many major business schools to teach aspiring managers how not to deal with major product safety issues.

1976. Teton Dam, Teton River, Idaho. Here's another amazing engineering folly involving a dam. As was the case with the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse, the breach of the Teton Dam arose from, among other things, an ignorance of basic geology. Built less than a year earlier upon very permeable sedimentary rock, the ill-fated dam started leaking at a time that unfortunately coincided with high water levels from spring runoff. The gigantic structure was no match for the immense hydraulic forces behind it, and it completely washed out in a matter of hours, killing 11 people, and wiping out several communities downstream. The dam was never rebuilt, and the U.S. government payed out over $300 million in damage claims.

1979. Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A partial meltdown in the core reactor of a nuclear power plant creates the worst nuke-plant disaster in the United States. Fortunately, no lives were lost, and the specter of widespread contamination was averted due to a massive (and expensive!) cleanup effort. However, some studies have shown a subsequent increase in cancer rates in the area. It is believed by some experts that the presence of a few water level gauges on the reactor vessel could possibly have prevented the accident. But just wait until Chernobyl...

1979. Kemper Arena roof collapse, Kansas City, Missouri. A major rainstorm literally swamped the roof of the stadium, resulting in a 1-acre chunk of the roof collapsing. As the roof plunged, the rapidly increasing air pressure inside burst out several walls. No one was inside at the time, and therefore, no one was hurt. But it sure would've been fun to watch from a safe distance! Three years prior to its collapse, the stadium was given the Honor Award by the American Institute of Architects, reinforcing my belief that architects don't have a clue about engineering principles. In fact, I think a lot of engineers don't have a clue about engineering principles.

1970s. Ford Pinto. An infamous little turd of a car, equipped with a four-cylinder engine and a gas tank with the propensity to explode on impact. Ford's brass, knowing full well the dangers at hand, decided in a smoke-filled room that it would be less costly in the long run to endure a few wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits than to spend the eleven dollars a pop to retrofit a safety device into their little McCars. Were they ever wrong.

1981. Hyatt Regency Crown Center. Kansas City is the site of another structural collapse, this one with far more tragic consequences. Three aerial walkways packed with partygoers collapsed, sending 114 people to their deaths, and injuring over 200. A last-minute design change in the steel tie rods that were to bear the load of the walkway (a change made by a non-technically-trained manufacturing contractor!), compounded by the fact that said tie rods were anchored to welded seams in the walkway, proved fatal. Several of the project engineers involved were later convicted of criminal negligence and lost their professional engineering licenses. They might be serving fries now at a fast-food joint near you.

1984. Union Carbide methyl isocyanate disaster, Bhopal, India. Considered the most tragic and devastating industrial screwup. Cost-cutting measures implemented by Union Carbide created a lax safety regimen and poor equipment. This in turn resulted in the accidental release of 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas, which, being heavier than air, spread along near the ground and into the nearby city. Depending on whom you ask, anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 people were killed outright, with tens of thousands more subsequent deaths. The disaster also caused hundreds of thousands of serious injuries.

1986. Space shuttle Challenger. A faulty o-ring on one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters caused a flareup that ignited the external fuel tank. This resulted in a rapid breakup of the craft, killing all on board, just 73 seconds after launch. Engineers had issued warnings prior to the launch that the parts could fail at low temperatures, but officials at NASA and manufacturer Morton Thiokol would hear nothing of that. Damn the torpedoes, it's full speed ahead!

1986. Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, Chernobyl, Ukraine. Another reactor meltdown, except the genie really gets out of the bottle on this one. Unlike Three Mile Island, the reactor here exploded, killing three workers and releasing radioactive contamination that swept across eastern and central Europe. Thousands of square miles of land remains contaminated, and over 300,000 people were forced to move from some of those areas.

1994-1995. Denver International Airport. With its 16-month completion delay (at $2 billion over budget), the designation "DIA" could have more easily meant "Done In April," "Done In August," "Delayed Indefinitely Airport," or "Denver's Imaginary Airport." Take your pick. Most annoying (or amusing, depending on your point of view) was the airport's bug-riddled automated baggage-handling system. Indeed, at the system's big public showing (complete with reporters and area dignitaries), cameras rolling, the baggage system went completely on the fritz, hurling luggage everywhere but where it was supposed to go. I would've paid good money to have been a fly-on-the-wall at that one. Just to see the looks on their faces...

1996-2000. Ford Explorer/Firestone rollover problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined that there was an unusually high number of rollover incidents involving Ford Explorer SUVs equipped with certain Firestone tires. Ford investigated and concluded that the tires were the culprit. Firestone pointed fingers at Ford's low recommended tire pressure and Explorer design flaws. The NHTSA testified before a Senate subcommittee that a documented coverup had been conducted by both Ford and Firestone. Product liability lawsuits have been aimed at both companies, with the Ford - Firestone blamefest continuing.

1999. Aggie bonfire, Texas A&M University. A huge pyramidal stack of logs is assembled by a bunch of dumbass engineering students, doused with jet fuel, and lit on fire, just for some nighttime pyro fun. The monster stack collapses, killing 12 students and injuring 27.

1999. NASA rocket scientists lose the $125 million Mars orbiter. This in itself would not be news, as this sort of thing can and does happen. What makes this tragic loss so spectacular is the fact that the orbiter was lost due to math errors for a critical operation: one engineering team did its calculations in English units, while another team used metric units.

2003. Space shuttle Columbia. Another shuttle flight ends very, very badly, this time during reentry. A chunk of foam insulation glanced off the wing during launch, and...well...you know the rest of the story.

2005. BP Amoco refinery explosion, Texas City, Texas. Texas City does it again. This time an explosion in a BP Amoco refinery, killing 15 and injuring more than 100. It is believed that a vehicle engine was the ignition source near an overflowing blowdown stack. It didn't help that they also had a personnel trailer located 100 yards from the stack.

2005. New Orleans, Louisiana. Here's a great idea for a city: build it on a swampy river delta several feet below sea level, situated along one of the largest and most powerful rivers in the world, and near a seacoast that is frequently the target of massive hurricanes. Then just to add a false sense of security, surround the city with levees to make the 1.3 million residents believe that the water will stay out. Well, guess what happened? And to make this story more ridiculous, they're going to build it back in the same place, with the same levees, managed by the same inept government agencies. Like Sisyphus rolling that stone up the mountain over and over again...

2006. Big Dig, Boston, Massachusetts. Tallying all the engineering, construction, logistical and fiscal problems surrounding the 14.6 billion dollar Central Artery/Tunnel Project would fill volumes. Substandard concrete batches, escalating costs, leaks, cracks, fraud, criminal misconduct by contractors, and a freak roof collapse that killed a motorist, are all there in the never-ending saga of this world-class boondoggle. Contrast this with the British and French, who seemed to have had far less trouble building their 31 mile-long Channel Tunnel, or the Germans with their skillfully executed canal bridge. One has to wonder if we Americans can really pull off a major civil engineering feat anymore. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from our European techie friends. But then, that would be far too optimistic.

2007. Interstate 35W bridge collapse, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both bridge decks of a single-span interstate highway bridge across the Mississippi River suddenly collapse, killing 13. Numerous wild-ass guesses flew from all directions, while a political blamefest ensued. The culprit? The under-designed steel gusset plates used to join structural members to one another. Apparently, the designers used 1/2" thick plates instead of using 1" thick plates.