October 9

The Vajont Dam, located north of Venice, Italy, is 860 feet tall and 86 feet wide. It is one of the largest dams in the world. It had been built to provide Italy with hydroelectric power. In early November of 1960, a minor landslide poured a bit of rock and soil in to the reservoir. No big deal really, less than a million cubic meters was involved. Hey, these people are professional engineers and civil servants do you really think they wouldn’t notice if it was important? It was decided that if the reservoir was emptied and refilled a couple of times everything would be just hunky dory. On the third emptying and refilling of the dam, on the 9th in 1963, all of sudden an estimated 260 million cubic meters of bits of forest, a bunch of dirt and a heck of a lot of rocks decided to go for a refreshing swim. The wave caused by the mountain doing a belly flop in to the reservoir behind the Vajont Dam was 750 feet taller than the dam and traveled at 68 miles per hour. Records are unclear but it seems that the chief engineer on the project pretty much summed the event up by yelling, “Holy S***, look at that sucker go.” To the pleasant surprise of the insurance companies, only the top three feet of the dam was damaged, and the Vajont still stands today, though very little electricity is produced by it.