This incendiary list of famous explosions compiles the most horrific man-made explosions in world history. From oil refinery disasters to nuclear power plant crises, the worst explosions have collectively killed hundreds of thousands of people. Humankind has a bad habit of blowing things up, whether through testing, attacks, or accidents, and the biggest explosions ever and the most famous explosions in history are all accounted for here and presented in reverse-chronological order.
The worst explosions ever range from the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II to the accidental man-made explosion and nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl. The worst man-made explosions are often disturbingly recent, such as the August 2015 chemical plant explosion in China. The biggest explosions ever also include non-nuclear testing done by the United States, while the biggest historical explosions consist of Soviet tests during the Space Race and many other Cold War shows of explosive might.
The biggest famous explosions have been going on since the early 1900s, with times of global war as hotbeds for the biggest historical explosions. Sometimes they're due to industrial negligence and sometimes they're military exercises, but every entry on this list of the most famous explosions in history is guaranteed to scare you senseless.
The Worst Explosions in History,
San Juanico disaster
Date: November 19, 1984
Location: San Juanico, Mexico
Cause: Liquid Petroleum Leak
Deaths: 500-600
A gas leak at a liquid petroleum farm lead to a series of explosions that registered on the Richter Scale, leading to not only an explosive cloud of highly flammable gasses shifting with the wind and setting fire to neighborUS National Library of Medicineing communities, but also blast waves that destroyed nearby houses and communities almost immediately.
Source: U.S. National Library of Medicine
Cataño Oil Refinery Fire
Date: October 23, 2009
Location: Bayamon, Puerto Rico
Cause: Oil Refinery Explosion
Deaths: 0
Three people were injured from a massive fire that started in an explosion at the Caribbean Petroleum Corporation oil depot and refinery. This blast was so big that it was the equivalent of a magnitude 2.8 earthquake. The resulting blaze took two days to put out, forcing many people to evacuate their homes.
Source: CBS News
Chernobyl Nuclear Meltdown
Date: April 26, 1986
Location: Ukraine
Cause: Nuclear Accident
Deaths: 31+
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded during a power failure experiment and the inadvertent explosion was the worst nuclear power plant accident ever. Though it directly killed 31 people, 25,000 cases of cancer in the area are attributed to radiation from the accident, and the lasting effects of the radiation unleashed by the blast and meltdown will impact multiple generations.
Source: CBS News
Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster
Date: July 7, 2013
Location: Quebec, Canada
Cause: Train Crash
Deaths: 47
A freight train of 74 cars loaded with crude oil derailed and rolled down a hill, causing the tank cars to explode. Five people went missing, 42 were confirmed to have died from the accident, and the blasts destroyed more than 40 buildings.
Source: The Guardian
2015 Tianjin Explosion
Date: August 12, 2015
Location: Tianjin, China
Cause: Industrial Accident
Deaths: 112+
Hundreds died and hundreds more were injured as a result of an out-of-control fire at the Port of Tianjin. Hazardous materials caused a blast in a chemical warehouse and Chinese authorities initially tried to censor reports of event, but with more than 100 dead, 95 missing, and over 700 injured, news spread quickly.
Source: CNN, Telegraph
Evangelos Florakis Naval Base Explosion
Date: July 11, 2011
Location: Zygi, Cyprus
Cause: Self-Detonated Explosives
Deaths: 13
62 people were injured and 13 people died in this 2011 incident, the worst peacetime military accident in Cyprus history. 98 containers of confiscated Iranian explosives were ineffectively stored, exposed to hot sunlight for over two years when they ultimately self-detonated at the naval base.
Source: BBC
Father of All Bombs
Date: September 11, 2007
Location: Russia
Cause: Non-Nuclear Testing
Deaths: 0
The "Father of All Bombs" (or FOAB) refers to the most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb of all time. Basically, this vacuum bomb packed the destructive power of a nuke without a nuclear reaction. The Russian military successfully tested it out in the fall of 2007, resulting in an explosion with a blast radius of 990 feet.
Source: Reuters
Tsar Bomba
Date: October 30, 1961
Location: Mityushikha Bay, Russia
Cause: Nuclear Testing
Deaths: 0
Unsurprisingly, the most powerful nuke ever detonated led to the most powerful artificial explosion in the history of mankind. When the USSR detonated the device, also known as Big Ivan, the mushroom cloud roughly 40 miles high, over seven times the height of Mount Everest. The shockwave broke windows more than 500 miles from the actual site.
Source: Slate
N1 Launch Explosion
Date: July 3, 1969
Location: Tyuratam, Russia
Cause: Launch Failure
Deaths: 0
Just weeks before the Apollo 11 moon landing, Soviet engineers launched the second test of this rocket system in a secretive mission to beat America in the space race. The ambitious rocket was powered by 30 engines, but when just one of them failed, all of them almost instantly exploded, as well. The result was a disaster that officially became the largest rocket explosion in history.
Source: Russian Space Web
Minor Scale
Date: June 27, 1985
Location: New Mexico
Cause: Nuclear Test
Deaths: 0
In the summer of 1985, the United States Defense Nuclear Energy detonated several thousands of more traditional explosives to see what a tiny nuke explosion would look like. It looked like a fireball that became the largest planned conventional explosion in world history.
Source: Nuclear Files