20. The Brooklyn Bridge Disaster
May 30th, 1883, was a holiday, so crowds headed for the newly opened Brooklyn Bridge’s promenade – the city’s highest vantage point back then. A pedestrian bottleneck formed on the Manhattan side, and as the tightly packed crowd pressed forward, some people were pushed down a short flight of stairs. People screamed, and some jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the bridge was about to fall. The result was a deadly stampede.
In the resulting chaos, twelve people were crushed to death, and hundreds more were injured. Subsequent investigation pinned the disaster on a failure to place police along the span, in order to keep the crowds dispersed and moving. It became standard practice thereafter for policemen on the bridge to keep people moving along.