Worst Recessions & Depressions in American History

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General Slocum disaster of 1904, when a New York City-based excursion paddle wheeler caught fire shortly after the ship departed for a church outing to Long Island Sound.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th American President who was assassinated by a group of Confederate sympathizers on April 14th, 1865, one week after the end of the Civil War.

On May 18th, 1980 a 5.1 magnitude earthquake rocked the Mount St. Helens with a disconcerting punch. Within 10 seconds, the mountain erupted and accompanied the biggest landslide ever recorded.

Johnstown flood of 1889, when a poorly-maintained damn gave way, sending a 21-foot-tall wall of water through downtown Johnstown Pennsylvania.

The Kon-Tiki Expedition, when in 1947 writer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl set out on a trans-Pacific passage on a balsa wood sailing raft named Kon-Tiki, sailing from South America to the Polynesian Islands.

In 1956 there were 65 million cars on American roadways growing to 90 million by 1975. Congress responded by passing the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to squash Fidel Castro’s increasingly communistic-backed regime. JFK failed to approve air and naval support which doomed the invasion.