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Ed is back for another "recent" historical dumpster fire in which a chemical that manufactures a chemical necessary for nylon production explodes in the largest non-WWII explosion in British history. They Nypro Flixborough chemical facility was built in the late 60's to be a sleek, state of the art facility that turned an extremely flammable substance called cyclohexane and turn it into caprolactam. Caprolactam is one of the key ingredients to making nylon which is a ubiquitous substance found everywhere in the modern era. Without nylon, everything from clothing to car parts to kitchen utensils and even surgical implants would be impossible.

On paper and in the minds of the workers and their families, the Flixborough facility was the wave of the future and offered a means of a modern livelihood... until one of the massive reaction tanks that turns 20 tons of cyclohexane into caprolactam develops a crack and could potentially result in an explosion that could destroy the entire complex.

In this case, the dumpster fire isn't the crack, or what managers refused to do that often results in dumpster fires, but it's what the managers DID do that caused so many problems... or one big one!

Take a listen and hop on over to the Day's Dumpster Fire website for show notes, sources, and pictures of what happened to this facility and how it affected an entire community in the English countryside.

Some other episodes that were mentioned in this episode that you might find interesting are:

Nuclear Power Plants

Victorian Bread Making

The Boston Molasses Flood

Byford Dolphin Incident

The Deepwater Horizon Incident

All of the above episodes have something common with the Flixborough Chemical Fire. Send Ed and Kara an email at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com when you notice the connection or what they all have in common? In other words, what often gets in the way of safety, sound practices, engineered solutions, and quotas in manufacturing that turns into a dumpster fire or contents for this podcast?

Hey before you go!

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.

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In today’s episode, Ed is back with a dumpster that can be traced back to the last decade instead of the last century. Kara’s monumental time travel into the Great Depression that changed America forever left off with the nation as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. While that’s pretty comforting to thin, about as an American, for those outside America, that wealth is a bull’s eye for those with the skills to “hack” into it.

Therefore, Ed is going to talk about the greatest bank heist in world history: the Bangladesh Bank Heist of 2016. This is where some very creative and skillful hackers put together a plan to rob the Bangladesh Bank and subsequent United States Federal Reserve of nearly $1billion! The heist itself only took a night to implement, but the plan dated back to the end of October 2014 and for over a year, these hackers hatched a plan so creative, detailed, and ambitious, any notion of failure was out the window. Even if failure did rear its ugly head, which happens often in this show, the hackers would still walk away with tens of millions of dollars.

In this episode, Ed will explain:

Part 1. What electronic banking is, how it’s different from banking in the 1800s, the pros and cons of electronic banking and how it changed the landscape of bank robbing.

Part 2. What happened on that fateful February 6th, 2016, day when office workers of the Bangladesh Bank arrived to work, only find that computers and one special printer weren’t working.

Part 3. The origins, identification, and the plan to steal nearly $1 billion in a single night. The elaborateness of this plan will blow you away!

Part 4. The execution of the plan on February 5, 2016, and how things went right from the beginning and how a misspelled word nearly brought the entire operation down.

Part 5. The outcome, who the hackers were, the nation state actors in play, and how does this affect your life.

Be sure to check The Day’s Dumpster Fire website of the complete catalog, detailed show notes, and Kara’s artwork.

Some other episodes you will like:

Episodes 41 & 42 – America’s Involvement in the Vietnam War

Episode 9 - Therac-25 Fire: a great episode that is computer themed much like this episode, but with the twist of what can happen when the computer can't keep up with the human user and people are getting zapped.

Hey before you go!

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

Send a text

The time has come! We thought we'd never get there, but Kara's PhD scholarly review of the Great Depression comes to its climactic end in this episode. This is quite possibly Kara's most ambitious episode yet and this doesn't even include all the extra stuff you can find on at thedaysdumpsterfire.com!

In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country.

In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herbert Hoover tried to do to correct things in American and how it ultimately was too little, too late. This led to Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the 1932 election by a landslide.

In Part 3. Kara discusses Roosevelt's strategy in which the federal government would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy to get people working again and banks up and running. In this episode, you'll be introduced to the "alphabet soup" in which a multitude of three-lettered government agencies sprung up across the country intending to right the ship and get America back on track economically. While the government funneling money into the economy may have been met with a sigh of relief to some. Many other workers were growing frustrated by low wages, long hours, and dangerous work, fueled by corporate greed and apathy. As a result, strikes formed coast to coast, and even though unemployment was rampant, so were the number of angry workers who were fed up being taken advantage of.

Lastly, in Part 4. Kara analyzes Roosevelt's second New Deal program that focused heavily on recovering the arts such as movie making and writing. This new New Deal brought in a number of lawsuits from dissenters (such as Roosevelt's own Vice President!!!) and eventually the supreme court had to get involved. Roosevelt didn't just stop there, he used the unemployed to build hospitals, schools, bridges, dams, hundreds of miles of roads, and airfields. However, this came at a cost as the fledgling "communist scare" tried its best to undermine Roosevelt's plan of recovery. Lastly, Kara sheds light on how the Great Depressions wasn't just an America only ordeal. The rest of the world was struggling in various degrees and this laid the canvas for which World War II would be painted on.

Some other episodes mentioned that you will find interesting:

Episode 13. Hindenburg

Episodes 59-62. Prohibition

Hey before you go!

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/