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I had heard of football stampedes before but didn’t know about the specific disasters.

It’s hard to imagine pieces of debris large enough to kill 83 people in the crowd (Le Mans). I’ll look into that more closely when I feel like I need to shock myself.
 
On 22 August 2015 the Boyfriend and I were at the Bournemouth Airshow, which (apart from being able to wave a final bye-bye to the Vulcan) we found by-and-large quite uninspiring. The Boyfriend commented that he thought we would have been better to have gone to Shoreham.

On the way home we learned how very fortunate we were to have not been anywhere near Shoreham that day ...
Jesus Christ. That's crazy. Glad you didn't go.

It’s hard to imagine pieces of debris large enough to kill 83 people in the crowd (Le Mans). I’ll look into that more closely when I feel like I need to shock myself.
Saw the videos, and basically they were large pieces that got flung off the cars and shot into the crowd, flying like a huge axe blade due to the momentum. They hit several times before finally stopping.
 
These are gruesome pages in the history of this thread.
I remember how one of the mentioned events entered this thread. And then got its own. A very strange time for me personally as I finished my PhD, got a job and moved, and had my most adventourous trip ever while Norway got the biggest shock since 9. April 1940.

Just having a look at the thread now. The worst moment for me, I think, was waking the next morning to the news that the death toll was more than 60.
 
For Germany in particular, some iconic things I suggest you look into include:

Uprisings in East Germany on 17 June 1953

West Germany winning the 1954 Football World Cup - obviously a positive event, it's arguably the single most important moment in German sports history and had ramifications for Germany far outside the football pitch

Construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961

Hamburg Flood in 1962

Spiegel-Affair 1962

Kennedy's speech in West Berlin in 1963

Murder of Benno Ohnesorg on 7 June 1967 - this is a really big one, think Kent State

RAF terrorism in autumn of 1977, especially the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer

1980 Oktoberfest bombing

1988 Gladbeck hostage crisis

1988 Ramstein air show disaster

Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989 (you probably know of that one)

Nazi riots in Rostock and Hoyerswerda 1991

Eschede train crash 1998

Odra flood of 2002

2002 Erfurt rampage (first German school shooting)

2011 Love Parade stampede

2011 Stuttgart protests

Everything after that is too recent for me to evaluate the historical significance.

There's of course lots more, but these are most of the biggies.
I haven't heard of half of those.
 
Damn, too much sad stuff to read about. I'll never forget the straight line wind storm in my home city of Eau Claire, WI in July of 1980. I was only 5, but I remember being down in our storm cellar and all the uprooted trees after.
 
Time for something a bit more cheerful I think: this is what the pear tree in our garden looks like today :)
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Every bit of cheerfulnes is needed these days. I feel like people have been super sensitive lately, here on the forum, at school, at home, everywhere I go. A nice warm spring might melt people’s hearts again.
 
Listening to En Vivo! with the gf brings back some great memories of the TFF tour. I was so proud of the boys during the first leg, but the proper album leg was bloody good too.
 
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