A man who was a student at Christ the King school in Florida recollects how he and his classmates ran outside immediately after the explosion and saw pieces of debris falling from the sky. The Challenger exploded January 28, 1986. NASA had arranged for many schools to watch the blastoff live, in part because a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe, was onboard the shuttle.

Astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman remembers his friend and fellow astronaut Ron McNair, one of the seven people who were killed in the Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986. Hoffman gives a first-person account of his interaction with McNair, who earned a PhD at MIT before being selected as an astronaut. Hoffman flew five missions on the Space Shuttle, the last in 1996, and was one of the astronauts who helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope.

Passengers share their experiences as the Costa Concordia, an Italian cruise ship, partially sank on January 13, 2012. One passenger shared how the angle of the cruise ship made getting onto lifeboats difficult and they estimated how many people swam to shore. Thirty-two of the 4,252 passengers did not survive.

Shortly after the Costa Concordia sunk off the shore of Italy on January 13, 2012, criticisms are being levied against crew members who, according to this video, did not recognize and/or respond to the danger quickly enough, including not making lifeboats available in a timely manner. Out of 4,252 passengers, 32 of them died.

Mary-Jo Salzburg and her parents, Jim and Jo, share their terrifying experience of getting on a lifeboat on January 13, 2012, as the Costa Concordia, an Italian cruise ship, partially sank. The ship was carrying 4,252 people – and was just on the first leg of the journey – when she hit a reef leading to the death of 32 people.

Paula Walker, BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill survivor, talks about how she survived the explosions at the oil rig. Paula made it to a lifeboat right before the explosion. Her first person account reveals that the disaster has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder as she struggles to live a normal life. The Deepwater Horizon was a 9-year-old semi-submersible, mobile, floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could operate in waters up to 10,000 feet deep. On April 22, an oil leak was discovered when a large oil slick began to spread at the former rig site. The leak lasted 87 days.