Close to midnight in 1928, the St. Francis dam near Los Angeles suddenly collapsed —the largest man-made disaster in California history. Fifty years later, screenwriter Robert Towne would use its details and characters as the foundation for “Chinatown”, making Jack Nicholson and his cigarette one of Hollywoods biggest stars. Two decades after that, Dan Akroyd ushered me and few others into a secret back room at his L.A. House of Blues where I shared a different sort of cigarette with Jack Nichol

The St Francis Dam disaster of 1928 is considered the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century William Mulholland, of which Mulholland Drive is named after, hastily oversaw the project. He ignored geologists warnings to not build the dam due to unstable foundations and went a step further by opting to use cheaper materials to get the job done quicker. Why? Because LA needed more water and fast. But this dam construction came right after building the first ever long distance

760K views · 4.4K reactions | Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed, sending billions of gallons of water toward sleeping people downstream. Watch FLOOD IN THE DESERT Tue May 3 at 9/8c on American Experience | PBS → pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/flood-desert | American Experience | PBS | Facebook

14 reactions | On this day in California history, tragedy struck....

26K views · 339 reactions | More than 450 people died in 1928 after a 180-foot-tall wall of water unleashed by the St. Francis Dam failure swept through Newhall, Piru, Fillmore, Santa Paula and other communities. Now a national memorial will honor those who were killed. https://bit.ly/2ucPY41?cid=facebook_Ventura_County_Star | Ventura County Star | Facebook