We've always felt that our kids' birthdays were days in which we let them know how special we think they are. So we had a lot of parties over the years. We had surprise parties, we've had football shaped cakes, we've had teddy bear picnics, we've had a fifties party. Then I met a young man, we'll call him Jimmy. He was on the reservation that we went to, and like so many of the young Native Americans that God has sent us to reach, he lived about fifty years in his eighteen. He was desperate when I met him, he was drugged, and he was ready to die. He told me he had never really experienced love in his whole life. One small evidence he gave me among many; he said he'd never had anybody celebrate his birthday. Well, I said, "Okay that's gotta change." So his birthday rolled around while we were with him, so we got a cake, we got some candles, we chipped in for a couple of gifts and humble though it was, we gave Jimmy the first party he ever had that was held in his honor.
The railroad bridge across the estuary of Scotland's Tay River was one of the great engineering projects of the Victorian era. Consisting of 85 spans and nearly two miles long, it was the longest bridge in the world when it was completed in 1878. Just 19 months after it opened, on the stormy night of December 28, 1879, with a strong gale blowing down the estuary, the bridge collapsed into the river. A train with six carriages plunged into the water, killing 75 and leaving no survivors. The engineer who had designed the bridge became ill and died ten months later. This disaster remains the British Isles' worst structural engineering failure.
Two accounts of the Tay Bridge disaster: http://www.tts1.demon.co.uk/tay.html