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What was Love Canal?

Love Canal, a community east of Niagara Falls, New York, made headlines in the late 1970s when investigators discovered that an entire neighborhood, including a school, had been built on a toxic waste dump. Beginning in 1947, the Hooker Electrochemical Company had used the clay-lined Love Canal as a dump for 43,000,000 pounds of chemical waste. The company then capped (installed a permanent cover) the canal and sold the property to the Niagara School Board for one dollar. Although the deed acknowledged that chemicals were buried at the site, the kinds of chemicals had not been specified. As early as 1958 residents had complained of odd odors and noticed skin rashes. Yet the extent of the problem did not become known until twenty years later, when an exceptionally heavy rainfall caused the chemicals to rise to the surface of the ground. Contaminating water, soil, and even air inside homes, the chemicals produced...

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1. Natural Disasters
   1. What are the largest volcanic eruptions in history?
   2. What were the deadliest volcanic eruptions in history?
   3. What is the strongest earthquake measured?
   4. What is the strongest earthquake in a city?
   5. What was the most damaging earthquake in history?
   6. How disastrous was the San Francisco earthquake?
   7. How often have tidal waves happened?
   8. Has a tidal wave ever hit the United States?
   9. What were the deadliest tropical storms in the world?
   10. What was the worst hurricane in U.S. history?
   11. Which hurricane caused the most damage?
   12. How long have hurricanes had names?
   13. Which country has the worst floods?
   14. When was the Johnstown Flood?
   15. What were the harshest blizzards to hit the United States?
   16. What was the Dust Bowl and what effect did it have?
   17. What were the worst famines in history?
   18. How much damage was done by the Great Fire of London?
2. Man-Made Disasters
   1. Was the Chicago fire really started by a cow?
   2. What was the impact of the fire at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas?
   3. What happened at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge?
   4. What is the true story of the Titanic?
   5. Was the Titanic the most disastrous shipwreck in history?
   6. What effect did the sinking of the Titanic have?
   7. What happened to the Hindenburg?
   8. What is the worst airplane crash in history?
   9. What happened to the spacecraft Apollo 13?
   10. Why did the space shuttle Challenger explode?
   11. What was Love Canal?
   12. What happened at Three Mile Island?
   13. What was the worst industrial accident in world history?
   14. What caused the nuclear accident at Chernobyl?
   15. Was the World Trade Center bombing really part of a larger terrorist plan?
   16. Was the Oklahoma City bombing the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil?