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
The Panama Canal Fire - Episode 51
Have you ever been lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to take on a project from a coworker or fellow student who single handedly ran the entire thing into the ground? Did this person do such a terrible job that it cost them their job? Moreover, when you started to clean up the project from this person you quickly asked yourself, "what in the actual @#^! happened here?
If this has ever happened to you, then you would have a pretty good understanding of what the American engineers experienced when they took over the Panama Canal project from France in 1904 after they had run the whole operation asunder.
Admittedly, the French really did give it their best effort, but they were not prepared for the difficult working conditions in Panama in the 1890s and they were lacking much of the technology that America had at its disposal in 15 years.
In this episode of The Day's Dumpster Fire, Ed and Kara take a stab at the Panama Canal and the 400 hundred year relationship Europe had with the region which was rocky to say the least. The concept was simple: the isthmus of Panama is only 50 miles wide. On the east side is the Atlantic Ocean, on the west side is the Pacific Ocean. If we can get goods and eventually ships through this little swath of land, then we can save THOUSANDS of miles and avoid sailing around South America.
However, this little strip of land proved to be vexing and it all came to a head when France vowed to complete the project, especially after completing the Suez Canal just prior, and after 22,000 lives and millions of dollars lost to... well who knows, France eventually had to throw in the towel and let America try and finish it off.
Take a listen and relish the fact that you never had to finish a project of this magnitude from a coworker! More importantly, learn from the mistakes the French made and learn how good old fashioned American ingenuity stepped up and completed one of the greatest engineering feats in human history.
For more details, check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website as well as take a look at Kara's stellar artwork. You'll also get to see the full catalog of over 50 dumpster fires this little podcast has investigated over the years.
If life has you down, or you've just recently really botched up something you planned to be 100% fool proof, then take a listen and relish in the fact that you're the subject matter of one of these episodes. And if you ARE a good candidate to be the subject matter of this podcast then shoot us an email at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com Kara and Ed would love to hear from you.
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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