SECONDS FROM DISASTER

In 1981, at the Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, suspended walkways come away from their fixings, plummeting onto revellers below and leaving 114 dead and 186 injured. What caused this structural failure?

Shortly after take-off a cargo flight loses its right engine and slams into an apartment block in Amsterdam. Was it an attack, mechanical failure or an accident?

On May 11, 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 en route to Atlanta takes off, with no one aware there's a fire in the cargo hold. Nine minutes into the flight, the jet crashes into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.

A carelessly discarded match caused the worst fire in London Underground's history, killing 31 people. How did this small fire erupt into a deadly fireball?

Nairobi, Kenya, 7 August, 1998. Terrorists detonate a truck bomb at the rear of the US embassy, killing 213 people and injuring 4,000 more. The embassy in Tanzania is also hit, resulting in an FBI manhunt for Osama bin Laden.

The Kursk, a Russian submarine, is on a military exercise when two explosions send her plunging to the bottom of the sea. What caused the tragedy? Theories include sabotage, friendly fire, and a collision with a US submarine.