- March 24, 1932: Twenty members of a touring party of Roller Derby skaters and support personnel are killed when their bus blows a tire, crashes into a bridge abutment and explodes in flames outside Salem, Illinois, The barnstorming troupe was en route from St. Louis to Cincinnati for another performance by the increasingly popular Derby, founded in 1935 by Leo Seltzer in Chicago. The horrific inferno nearly puts the enterprise out of business, but replacement skaters will be signed and Roller Derby will prove to be a durable sporting attraction.
- March 24, 1999: The Mont Blanc Tunnel is a road tunnel in the Alps under the Mont Blanc mountain, linking Chamonix, France and Courmayeur, Italy. On March 24, 1999, a truck carrying a cargo of flour and margarine caught fire in the tunnel. The margarine load in the trailer was the equivalent of 6,000 gallons (23,000 liters) of oil and caused the fire to burn for 56 hours and reach temperatures of over 1,832°F (1,000°C). The blaze claimed 39 lives. There were 51 people trapped inside the tunnel after the blaze began, and the 12 people who survived all said the same thing: "That guy on the motorcycle saved my life". It was Pierlucio Tinazzi, a security guard employed by the Italian side. His job was to ride up and down the tunnel to see that everything was running smoothly. He was on the French side at the time emergency services had given up. He donned breathing equipment and rode into the tunnel on his BMW K75 motorcycle. He was in radio contact with the Italian side for over an hour before succumbing to the intense heat. He died inside the tunnel. His BMW melted into the pavement after he dragged an unconscious truck driver to behind a fire door. A commemorative plaque at the Italian entrance honors his heroism.
---JohnnyU
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