Hindenburg disaster

Sam Shere's photograph, Lakehurst, New Jersey, May 6, 1937 A dozen or more photographers were at Lakehurst for the landing, so the airship's fire was caught by many cameras at once. Shere's frame of the Hindenburg bursting into flames is the one that became an icon, and the disaster is often treated as the moment the era of passenger airship travel ended. This is the list's industrial accident in its purest form: a technology whose public trust collapsed in a single evening. The picture shows a burning machine rather than suffering people, which is part of why it still works so well for teaching what a single failure can do to public confidence.