The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'disasters'
2008/5/19
The nifty thing about being a totalitarian state is that, when you declare three days of mourning, people mourn:
China has issued orders that all entertainment web sites and regular television programming be shut down completely for the next 3 days. Only web sites covering the recent tragic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and television stations broadcasting CCTV earthquake programming will be allowed to remain live.Mind you, this is according to Twitter messages from one web entrepreneur in China, and other reports are divided on whether such a shutdown has actually occurred.
2003/2/2
Space shuttle Columbia explodes, killing all on board, much as happened in the Challenger disaster in 1986. The shuttle's crew did include the first-ever Israeli astronaut, a fighter pilot who bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and security was reportedly extremely tight around the mission. Terrorist involvement is considered unlikely. (I wonder if any terrorist groups will rush to claim credit for it anyway.)
2003/1/31
Horror train smash in NSW; 9 killed and many more injured as a peak-hour commuter train derailed between Sydney and Wollongong. And here we were thinking these sorts of things happened only in backward third-world countries like Egypt and England.