I always assumed that everyone on board the Hindenburg when it exploded over new Jersey in 1937 died. But in fact, there were 97 people on board and 35 of them died. That’s a tragedy, but slightly less tragic in terms of loss of life than I thought.

The U.S. military made its own experiments with airships, and many of them went much, much worse than that. The American versions tended to use helium, so they didn’t explode, but they just couldn’t be controlled well in storms. Weather forecasting and communications were much less far along then than we take for granted now, so people trying to fly these things were often taken by surprise and a lot of them crashed with people dying horrifically from falls, impacts and drowning. This long article from a site called The Atavist goes through this disturbing history.