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Topics · 12 dossiers · 84 case files

The case files, by subject.

Software failures, bridges, blackouts, medicine, mysteries, markets and more. Each dossier gathers the investigations on one subject, in date order, and names the patterns they share.

Photograph: FBI fingerprint examiners at work in a National Guard armory in Washington, DC, during the Second World War. Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons.

15 case files · 1969–2025Software failuresCode that lost a rocket, overdosed patients, sank a trading firm and froze airports worldwide: sourced investigations into how software fails.
16 case files · 1954–2024Aviation and spaceflightLost spacecraft, airliner accidents and repairs made across deep space: how investigators read flight data, telemetry and hardware to find causes.
12 case files · 1628–2023Bridges, buildings and structuresBridges that twisted, walkways that fell, hulls that cracked and a skyscraper repaired at night: how structures fail and what the evidence shows.
7 case files · 1979–2025Energy and power gridsContinental blackouts, frozen power plants, reactor accidents and a blown-out well: how energy systems cascade from one failure into many.
11 case files · 1747–2013Medicine and public healthCholera maps, scurvy trials, childbed fever, ulcers, pandemics and a drug America never approved: how evidence changed medicine.
7 case files · 1845–2014Mysteries and open questionsA vanished airliner, a deadly night in the Urals, a signal from deep space and an ancient bronze calculator: what the evidence can and cannot settle.
9 case files · 1887–2023Extraordinary claims and replicationCold fusion, faster-than-light neutrinos, a room-temperature superconductor and a Big Bang signal: how science checks a result too good to be true.
6 case files · 1999–2023Markets, money and fraudA flash crash, a trading firm undone in 45 minutes, a two-day bank run and a Ponzi scheme that passed examinations: the evidence behind financial failures.
11 case files · 1815–2021Weather, climate and the EarthA volcanic winter, killer smog, a hurricane, the Dust Bowl, the ozone hole, a gas-filled lake and a solar storm: how investigators read the Earth.
9 case files · 1628–2023Ships and the seaTitanic, Vasa, cracking Liberty ships, a harbour explosion, a lost Arctic expedition and the Titan submersible: what the evidence shows.
12 case files · 1999–2025Investigations from the 2020sThe CrowdStrike outage, the xz backdoor, the Iberian blackout, the AWS outage, Alaska 1282, Titan and more, read from the official findings.
13 case files · 1846–2015Astronomy and physicsA planet found by its pull, the Big Bang's afterglow, pulsars, gravitational waves and a famous null result: how physics turned anomalies into knowledge.

Prefer dates? See every case on the timeline. Or browse by field: Engineering & technology · Science & discovery · History & systems.