Ambition and Catastrophe

The five moments in this challenge

The scenes are shown below — tap a card to reveal its place and year.

1. 

   Round 1 · 1937

   Hindenburg Disaster at Lakehurst Naval Air Station

   Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA

   The German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast, abruptly ending the era of commercial passenger zeppelins.

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2. 

   Round 2 · 1643

   Scaffolding Surrounds the Taj Mahal During Construction

   Agra, India

   Commissioned by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favorite wife, this monumental marble mausoleum required the labor of twenty thousand artisans over two decades.

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3. 

   Round 3 · 1945

   First Atomic Bomb Detonation at the Trinity Test

   Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico, USA

   The United States Army conducted the world's first detonation of a nuclear weapon, codenamed Trinity, ushering in the atomic age with an explosion equivalent to 25 kilotons of TNT.

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4. 

   Round 4 · 1913

   Steam Shovels Excavating the Panama Canal Culebra Cut

   Culebra, Panama

   The daunting Culebra Cut was an artificial valley carved through the continental divide, requiring tens of thousands of workers to remove over a hundred million cubic yards of rock and dirt.

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5. 

   Round 5 · 1914

   Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip

   Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

   Outside Schiller's delicatessen near the Latin Bridge, a nineteen-year-old nationalist fired the fatal shots into the Austro-Hungarian heir's open-topped Gräf & Stift car, sparking the outbreak of the First World War.

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