April 29, 1975 - A total 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese were evacuated from Saigon by helicopter in Operation Frequent Wind, during the last days of the Vietnam War. Evacuations by fixed-wing aircraft had already been occurring since the beginning of March, but as the imminent collapse of Saigon became more evident, plans were drawn up for helicopter evacuations of top officials and embassy staff. One of the most famous photographs of the evacuation (shown above) is often mislabeled as taking place at the U.S. Embassy. In reality the building was the Pittman apartment building, which was used as a residence of various Embassy, CIA and USAID employees.

This composite image shows the Old Man before and after the collapse.

May 3, 2003 - The Old Man of the Mountain, a series of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire, which appeared to be the jagged profile of a face, collapsed to the ground between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m. The rock formation was created by glaciers an estimated 10,000 years ago and the first recorded mention of the Old Man was in 1805 when a surveying team claimed credit for the discovery. The profile has been New Hampshire's state emblem since 1945 and has been put on the state's license plate, state route signs and is featured on the back of its Statehood Quarter. Preservation efforts on the Old Man had been made since the 1920's, and a team from the state highway and park division performed annual maintenance on the profile. Despite these efforts, the Old Man collapsed due to fissures created by freezing and thawing. Dismay over the collapse was so great that people left flowers at the base of the cliffs in tribute.

May 4, 1988 - A chemical fire at the Pacific Engineering Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON) plant in Henderson, Nevada set off a series of explosions that claimed two lives, injured 372 people, and caused more than $100 million of damage. The PEPCON plant was one of only two American producers of ammonium perchlorate, an oxidizer used in solid fuel rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle. At the time the Space Shuttle program was suspended due to the 1986 Challenger disaster, and PEPCON had nowhere to ship their excess product. The fuel was being stored in 55 gallon drums, stacked in the parking lot of the plant. At the time of the disaster an estimated 4,000 tons of the finished product were stored at the facility. The explosions leveled the PEPCON plant as well as the nearby Kidd & Co. marshmallow manufacturing facility. A subsequent investigation determined that the largest explosion was the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT and registered 3.5 on the Richter Scale. Video of the fire and explosion can be viewed here.

"Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth, but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

 

  - Daniel Webster, referring to New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain.