The Day's Dumpster Fire
A small little podcast where your hosts, Kara and Ed, look at historical and not so historical cases where we don't celebrate humanity's success but its most fantastic failures. There are always lessons to be learned in failure and humanity has run amuck with fool proof plans that immediately go sideways and fall apart shortly after executing those plans. Join us as we scour the "human-verse" in search for the most poignant, and often hilarious, failures and try to pull out what can be learned from these failures.
The Day's Dumpster Fire
Episode 37. Transatlantic Telegraph Fire
Hey there! Today's episode is going to check all the boxes that go into classifying something as a legit historical dumpster fire. Is there a huge problem? Check. Is there a plan to solve that problem? Check. Does humanity plan out the solution with great detail and expense? Check and Check. When executing that plan, does everything fall apart shortly after? Check. And for a bonus: does everything fall apart over and over and over? Check and Check and Check!
Today, Ed is diving into the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable this is one of the largest and most ambitious engineering feats of the 1800's. Enamored with the massive success of Samuel Morse's telegraph machine and his subsequent Morse Code, both America and England desperately wanted to have a telegraph line that would span the "pond" and connect the two countries. After all, the world already had over 30,000 miles of telegraph wire spread out over Europe and America. These wires were above the ground, under the ground, and even under the water. So how hard can it be to lay down one measly little wire across the Atlantic Ocean?
Well it turns out it's very hard, and when you combine the elements of nature, with the hubris of humanity, you're asking for things to go wrong over and over again!
So sit back and take a listen, because today's episode will make you appreciate your cellphone all that much more. For more details on this topic and the entire library, check out the website: www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com
Hey before you go! Email us your "Trashcan Fires" to
thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com (be sure to put "Trashcan Fire" in the subject line
We would love to see your stories where you tried to plan out every little detail, but when you executed that plan, it all went horribly wrong shortly after and turned into your own Dumpster Fire.
Be sure to put "Trashcan Fire" in the subject line followed by the title of the story and whether or not we can use your name.
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