Thanksgiving Day Disaster facts for kids
The Thanksgiving Day Disaster took place on November 29, 1900, at the annual college football game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal, also known as The Big Game. A large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent of $40 today ) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof collapsed, spilling many spectators onto a furnace. Twenty-three people were killed, and more than a hundred more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.
Background
Every year since 1892, the University of California and the Stanford University football teams play an annual game towards the end of November or the beginning of December. The event is known as The Big Game. From 1892 to 1900, the game took place at Recreation Park stadium in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day. The stadium was located in a heavily industrial part of San Francisco. After the 1900 game, the event's location would alternate between the two schools' campuses.
At the 1897 Big Game, portions of a packed grandstand collapsed under the weight of spectators. Nobody was killed, but a 10-year-old boy was hospitalized.
The disaster
On the day of the 1900 game, the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works factory had just opened across the street from the stadium. Because the factory was brand new, only one furnace was active that day. The remaining furnaces were not scheduled to start until the following Monday. The furnace was 30 by 60 feet (9.1 by 18.3 m) and was filled with 15 short tons (14 t) of molten glass with a temperature of 3,000 °F (1,650 °C). It was enclosed by a series of binding rods that resembled croquet hoops.
The kickoff took place at 2:30 p.m. with a crowd of 19,000 spectators watching in the stadium, with thousands more watching in the street. A group of 500 to 1000 people who did not want to pay $1 for a ticket gathered on the factory's roof to watch for free. Factory employees tried to phone the police to turn back the crowd but were instead told to speak to the game's lieutenant. However, the officers stationed at the stadium denied them entry.
Approximately twenty minutes after kickoff, the roof of the factory collapsed due to the excessive load.
Of the hundreds of people on the roof, at least a hundred people fell four stories to the factory floor. Sixty to a hundred more people fell directly on top of the furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). Factory employees worked to remove many bodies from the furnace, using metal poles to poke bodies out of reach.
Despite the incident, the game continued, with Stanford winning.
Aftermath
Thirteen people were killed on the day of the disaster, with nine more dying in the hospitals in the days that followed. A 28-year-old man succumbed to his injuries three years after the disaster, bringing the final death toll to twenty-three. All of the victims were male, and most were children.
Many American newspapers reported the incident on the front page. Most of the content in the sports sections was about the game itself. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to the event as the "closest and most exciting game of football ever played by the elevens of the two California universities." Writers for the student newspapers at both universities also paid little attention to the disaster.
The San Francisco Call referred to the incident as "perhaps the most horrifying accident that ever happened in San Francisco".
No physical memorial to the disaster exists, save for a cross at one 12-year-old boy's grave. The site of the disaster is now occupied by a UCSF building.
