September 22

In the pre-dawn hours of September 22, 1993, Amtrak Train No. 1, the Sunset Limited, plunged off a single-track railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama after a towboat pushed barges into the bridge earlier that night. The impact laterally displaced two spans without tripping track circuits; signals showed clear, the train crossed at line speed, and 47 people were killed while more than 100 were injured. The disaster exposed a cascade of vulnerabilities between maritime navigation, bridge protection, and rail signaling that reshaped safety thinking afterward.

The Iran–Iraq War began on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi forces launched a broad invasion across the Iran–Iraq frontier, striking into Khuzestan province and along the Shatt al‑Arab waterway. What started as a calculated, short war to seize territory and exploit revolutionary Iran’s weakness became eight years of trench fighting, tanker attacks in the Gulf, chemical warfare, and enormous human and economic cost.

In the early hours of 22 September 1934 an underground explosion at Gresford Colliery, on the eastern outskirts of Wrexham, ripped through the mine and killed 266 men. The blast exposed the lethal mix of methane and coal dust, strained the limits of rescue technology, and left a community with dozens of bodies never recovered. The official inquiry identified probable mechanisms but not a single agreed cause; the disaster reshaped debates about mine safety and left an enduring local memory.

On the morning of 22 September 1914, the German submarine U‑9, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, torpedoed and sank three British Cressy‑class armored cruisers — HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy — in the Broad Fourteens of the southern North Sea. The three ships went down within about an hour, with roughly 1,400–1,500 sailors killed and several hundred rescued. The event exposed the deadly reach of the submarine and forced lasting changes in Royal Navy practice.