July 17, 1981
The Hyatt Regency walkways
A tea dance in the atrium, ten past seven in the evening
Two suspended walkways crossed the lobby atrium of the Kansas City Hyatt, one above the other, hung from the same set of rods. A change made during construction doubled the load on the connection at the fourth floor and nobody recalculated it.
About sixteen hundred people were at a Friday tea dance. Some were dancing on the walkways. Just after seven the fourth-floor connection failed and both walkways came down onto the crowd below.
A hundred and fourteen were killed and more than two hundred hurt. Rescuers used jackhammers and a crane inside the building. One man's leg was amputated by a doctor under the concrete to get him out.
It remained the deadliest structural collapse in American history until 2001.