The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the
pride of Nazi Germany, burst into flames upon touching its
mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers
and crew members on this day in 1937.
Radio announcer Herb Morrison
(1905 – 1989).
Morrison who came to Lakehurst to record a routine radio
report for an NBC newsreel, immortalized the Hindenburg
disaster in a famous on-the-scene description in which he
emotionally declared, “Oh, the humanity!”
The recording of Morrison’s commentary was immediately
flown to New York, where it was aired as part of one of the
first coast-to-coast radio news broadcasts in the United
States.
Lighter-than-air passenger travel rapidly fell out of favor
after the Hindenburg disaster, and no rigid airships
survived World War II.
