Not in Cleveland

At the turn of the 20th century, the east Cleveland neighborhood was an independent town of its own, although it's since been annexed by the bigger city. It was in 1908 that Collinwood's Lake View School caught fire. Although the school's walls were made of masonry, the building was otherwise a fire trap waiting to happen: wooden joists, no fire doors, wooden floors and walls that were carefully oiled. When an overheated steampipe lit one of the joists, the school quickly went up in flames, killing 172 students, two teachers, and one other person. Nineteen were so badly burned that they could not be identified. This footage of the smoking ruins comes from the Cleveland Public Library. The tragedy's one bright spot: it helped to encourage the construction of safer buildings.