“...It’s starting to rain again. The rain has slacked up a little bit. They’ve backed the motor of the ship for just holding it, just enough to keep it form….It’s burst into flames! Get this, Scotty. Get this, Scotty. It’s crushing, terrible (in a choked–up voice throughout), Oh, my..get out of the way, please..it’s burning, bursting into flames and it’s falling on the mooring mast and all the folks in between…this is terrible. This is one of the worse catastrophes in the world (sobs)…four or five hundred feet into the sky. It’s a terrible crash, ladies and gentlemen, the smoke and the flames now, and the plane is crushing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast (sobs, chokes) Oh, the humanity, all the passengers, teeming around here. I don’t believe…I can’t even talk to people whose friends are out there. It’s a …(sobs), I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen, honest: it’s a laid-down mass of smoking wreckage, and everyone can hardly breathe. I’m sorry; honest, I can hardly breath. I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it. Scotty, that’s terrible. (sobs) I can’t …listen, folks, I’m going to have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed”
- Live radio commentary on the crash of the Hindenburg dirigible, May 1937
“There seems to be a major malfunction.”
-NASA’s voice-over commentator during the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, January 1986