- 5 days ago
History's darkest moments have a way of freezing time... Join us as we explore more chilling events that made the world collectively hold its breath. From devastating natural disasters to shocking acts of violence, these events fundamentally changed our perception of safety and stability in the modern world.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Twenty-five people were on the bus when it was hijacked by disgruntled former policeman, Rolando Mendoza.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at more moments from the mid-20th century and beyond that made the world stand still.
00:13What the U.S. was looking for here, frankly what the world was looking for and concerned about, was whether Israel would make the decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
00:24Assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
00:27Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You'll excuse the fact that I'm out of breath, but about ten or fifteen minutes ago a tragic thing, from all indications, at this point has happened in the city of Dallas. Let me quote to you this.
00:37November 22nd, 1963, stands as one of the most infamous dates in American history.
00:43On that day, President Kennedy, widely regarded as a youthful and inspiring symbol of national renewal, was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, Texas.
00:53From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.
01:07It was the first assassination of a sitting U.S. President in over 60 years, the last being William McKinley in 1901, and sent shock waves across not only the country, but the world at large.
01:19Lee Harvey Oswald, a disgruntled former Marine, was arrested shortly after the shooting, but any hope of a full reckoning was dashed when Oswald himself was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby just two days later.
01:32I felt very sorry for Jack Ruby. He looked alone. He looked forlorn. He just really looked pitiful. He never said anything, never smiled.
01:46Munich Massacre.
01:47The Olympic Games are traditionally seen as a celebration of global unity, when nations compete in friendly but fiercely contested events.
02:03But that spirit was shattered during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Palestinian militant group Black September stormed the Olympic village.
02:12The group killed two members of the Israeli team and took nine more hostage, demanding the release of who they deemed political prisoners held by Israel.
02:20Climbing over the fence, taking the Israelis hostage in building 31, killing one at the very outset, wounding another who later died of his wounds, and now we find that this drama has not ended.
02:34The third helicopter now moving right by us, right over the Olympic village, passing now over the main stadium, all the lights on in this Olympic site.
02:43What followed were two botched rescue attempts by West German authorities.
02:48Though five of the eight attackers were killed, the operation ended in tragedy.
02:52All nine remaining hostages were killed, turning a global sporting event into an international nightmare.
02:58When I was a kid, my father used to say, our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight.
03:05They've now said that there were 11 hostages, two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.
03:19Challenger disaster.
03:20It was a bitter cold, but sparkling clear morning at Cape Canaveral. Here at the last seconds of the countdown.
03:25Three, two, one, and liftoff. Liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.
03:35All the communications between the shuttle and mission control indicated everything was going fine.
03:40It's hard to deny that President Ronald Reagan's teacher in space project was driven by good intentions.
03:45Designed to promote science education, the initiative aims to send educators into space to inspire their students and the general public.
03:5311,000 applicants later, Krista McAuliffe, a social studies teacher from New Hampshire, was selected as the first civilian to participate.
04:00Has it all hit you yet?
04:01No, no, I don't think so. I still can't believe that I'm going to actually be going into that shuttle.
04:08It just, it just really doesn't seem possible. Maybe when I'm on the launch pad it will.
04:13Her involvement piqued national interest, and the launch of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28th, 1986, was broadcast live to millions of viewers.
04:22Just 73 seconds after liftoff, the shuttle broke apart due to catastrophic mechanical failure, killing all seven crew members aboard.
04:30We mourn seven heroes. Michael Smith, Dick Scobie, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Krista McAuliffe.
04:43We mourn their loss as a nation together.
04:46What happened at Tiananmen Square?
04:48Good evening. It is now Sunday morning in Beijing, and Chinese army troops have retaken Tiananmen Square, where thousands of demonstrators have been camped for the last three weeks.
04:57The army moved in with a vengeance, at some points firing into the crowd before they actually got to the square.
05:03By some counts, more than a hundred people are dead, hundreds more are injured.
05:07Widely regarded as one of the most consequential moments in modern Chinese history, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and the violent crackdown that followed, cast a long, ominous shadow over the nation's future.
05:20What began as a student-led call for political reform, including demands for democratic governance and greater freedom of expression, quickly snowballed into a massive pro-democracy movement.
05:30At its peak, the crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square is estimated to have numbered over a million.
05:35Alarmed by the scale and persistence of the demonstrations, the Chinese Communist Party declared martial law.
05:41In the early hours of June 4th, government troops and tanks moved in, resulting in violent confrontations and the deaths of hundreds, possibly even thousands, of unarmed civilians.
05:51And in Los Angeles and San Francisco today, indeed in every major city in America, there were tears.
05:57Tears for fellow students, for family members killed or wounded. Tears of worry waiting for news.
06:04Around the country, students made telephone contact with Beijing and then played the recorded messages for others.
06:11Invasion of Iraq.
06:13My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
06:26In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives,
06:31the administration of President George W. Bush launched a sweeping global campaign known as the War on Terror.
06:37While the initial focus was on dismantling Al-Qaeda, attention soon shifted to Iraq.
06:42In 2003, the United States invaded the country, asserting that Saddam Hussein's regime was developing weapons of mass destruction, and posed a threat to global security.
06:51I'm Kerry Sanders with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines.
06:54We're about 100 miles south of Baghdad, where they have made a rather huge discovery of a weapons cache that certainly exceeds anything the Marines ever expected to find.
07:04That is one of the bunkers.
07:06You can see the earth up along the side.
07:08Well, they found 120 bunkers just like that in this area.
07:12As explained by General Tommy Franks, the objective was to, quote, identify, isolate, and eliminate these weapons.
07:19However, the evidence supporting such claims was later discredited, and the invasion drew widespread international condemnation.
07:25The conflict remains a deeply controversial chapter in American history, often described as a resounding failure.
07:31Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure.
07:37The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.
07:46Hurricane Katrina.
07:48Ray Nagin will get the updated information on his city's preparedness for Hurricane Katrina.
07:53The storm is intensifying and is still pointing toward New Orleans, and it's not a meteorologist or an expert that I have talked to that says that this storm will not impact New Orleans in a major way.
08:07The images left behind by Hurricane Katrina remain permanently etched in the American consciousness.
08:12Striking in August 2005, the storm caused an estimated $125 billion in damage and claimed nearly 1,400 lives.
08:21Approximately 80% of New Orleans was submerged after catastrophic levy failures, many of which were later deemed preventable.
08:28The disaster displaced over a million people, making it one of the largest of its kind in U.S. history.
08:33The water is getting too deep, and it's getting deeper. We're told there's a hospital about six blocks away, and we're going to try to make it there.
08:39Each encounter gets more and more profound.
08:42We got people in three-story houses that still trying to survive in the houses.
08:46An airboat offers to take us to the hospital, but it sinks in the maze of tight corners.
08:52In the aftermath, the federal government faced intense criticism for what many viewed as a slow, disorganized, and inadequate response.
08:59The storm exposed deep vulnerabilities in American infrastructure, emergency planning, and social inequality,
09:05and exposed the sizable cracks in systems people had come to trust implicitly.
09:11This is where the levy came down, and this is where, again, where the water went underneath the sheet pile and compromised the foundation of the levy system.
09:19So this kind of shows you how big the breach was.
09:21Yes, absolutely.
09:23But it never came over, it came under.
09:25It came under.
09:26And then just pushed it down.
09:28Mumbai attacks.
09:29We were all hearing shots, we were all hearing blasts, but we really couldn't see anything because we were so high.
09:34Can you just tell me if you're alright?
09:36You're seeing that?
09:38I think I'm alright.
09:40In November 2008, India's financial and cultural capital of Mumbai was brought to a standstill
09:46by one of the deadliest coordinated terrorist attacks in the country's history.
09:49Over the course of four days, ten armed militants from the Pakistan-based militant organization Lakshari Taiba executed a series of brutal assaults,
09:58including at a major train station, two luxury hotels, a Jewish Chabad house, and a popular cafe.
10:04Relatives gathered waiting for news, including the family of Madhu Kapoor, who had been having dinner in the restaurant with her husband Ashok.
10:12They got separated in the melee.
10:14Well, I thought he was with me, but suddenly when I got out of the door and looked back, he wasn't there.
10:22The attacks left 175 people dead, including their perpetrators, and over 300 more injured.
10:28Heavily armed and tactically trained, the assailants deliberately targeted civilians.
10:32The Indian government's response, while ultimately effective in neutralizing the attackers, drew criticism for its speed and coordination, or lack thereof.
10:41During our time on this fishing boat, we haven't encountered any maritime police, any Coast Guard vessels.
10:49It's clear that the gunman discovered this city's weakness.
10:54Mumbai is unprotected from the sea.
10:57Manila hostage crisis.
10:59Signs on the bus windows said he wanted his job back.
11:02He released some hostages during the day.
11:05On August 23, 2010, a routine sightseeing trip in Manila turned into a televised international tragedy.
11:12Former police officer Rolando Mendoza hijacked a tourist bus carrying 25 people, mostly Hong Kong nationals, in an attempt to force his reinstatement after being dismissed for extortion.
11:23What began as a standoff quickly devolved into chaos.
11:26Four people are dead in the Manila hospital.
11:28One of the patients here, her husband has died.
11:31She will be going to another hospital to see if her children are there.
11:35After hours of negotiations failed, Mendoza opened fire, killing eight hostages and injuring several others, before being fatally wounded by police.
11:44The crisis was broadcast live across Asia, drawing outrage not only for the act itself, but for the Manila police district's widely castigated response, described as disorganized and poorly executed.
11:56May I address myself to the Chinese people who are here, who are with us, who joined us, from the bottom of my heart as the president of the Republic of the Philippines, and on behalf of the people of the Philippines, may I apologize formally to you now.
12:16Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
12:18You can only really understand the enormity when you see these pictures, an earthquake so strong it literally shifted the Earth's axis by about 25 centimeters.
12:28A 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake off the coast of Japan's northeastern Tohoku region triggered a massive tsunami that reached heights of over 40 meters in some areas, and traveled as far as 10 kilometers inland.
12:40Occasionally referred to as the Great East Japan Earthquake, entire towns were swept away in minutes, and more than 19,000 miles away.
12:47More than 19,000 people died, with thousands more injured or missing.
12:51That tsunami reached 23 feet high in some places, nearly twice the height of me standing on Chris's shoulders, for example.
12:59And that wall of water is primarily the cause of a death toll that is in the hundreds, but is certain to rise, with 88,000 people in Japan still unaccounted for.
13:10The devastation directly led to a nuclear emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, where reactor meltdowns released radioactive material into the environment.
13:19The events of March 2011 stand as the costliest natural disaster in history, and, not unlike the aforementioned Hurricane Katrina, left traumatic images of destruction in its wake.
13:30Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
13:35You have the option to be notified for occasional videos, or all of them.
13:39If you're on your phone, make sure you go into settings and switch on your notifications.
13:43Israel-Iran War
13:48Israel has carried out what he calls a pre-emptive strike against Iran.
13:51This is what we've been looking for over the course of the past days, and frankly something the US has been tracking for several weeks now.
13:58The possibility that Israel will carry out a strike against Iran.
14:02There are some social media reports of explosions happening in Tehran.
14:06Amid the broader Gaza war that has destabilized the Middle East in the 2020s, tensions between mortal enemies Israel and Iran escalated to a dangerous fever pitch.
14:16In a brief, but quite literally explosive conflict, Israel launched targeted strikes against key Iranian intelligence sites, reportedly killing high-ranking military officials and damaging nuclear enrichment infrastructure.
14:27But I'm really unhappy if Israel's going out this morning because of one rocket that didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land.
14:36I'm not happy about that.
14:37You know what, we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f**k they're doing.
14:48Do you understand that?
14:49The situation intensified when US President Donald Trump authorized direct military action in support of Israel, marking a rare direct intervention.
14:57Although the hostilities lasted less than two weeks and concluded with a precarious ceasefire, the sudden involvement of the United States sent shockwaves through the international community, raising fears, however briefly, of a much larger potentially global confrontation.
15:11Trump administration claims Iran's program was obliterated, but Iran says it is still assessing the extent of the damage.
15:18And the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog says the country may be able to resume enriching uranium within months.
15:26Do you remember where you were when you heard about these historical moments?
15:30Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
15:32I think, you know, there had been clearly some opportunity for diplomacy between the US and Iran.
15:37President Trump spoke of that possibility right after the ceasefire was initiated.
15:42But unfortunately, I think now we're seeing not only the rhetoric, but actions going in the other direction.
15:50If we're seeing not only the universe, we see a lot of people in the other direction starting from happening in the other direction.
Recommended
36:20
|
Up next
11:28
1:31:02
1:30:08
1:24:29
12:29
16:11
13:41
54:13
52:19
13:50
14:43
24:01
12:17
21:43
12:27
13:44
13:48