When the first members of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in 1917 they found that the telephone lines already in operation were overloaded. To solve the problem, John J Pershing called for experienced, bilingual switchboard operators, which meant women. Hundreds would don the uniform and answer the call as “Hello Girls”, serving in the Signal Corps.
The
St. Francis Dam was a curved
concrete gravity dam, built to create a large regulating and storage
reservoir for the city of
Los Angeles, California. The reservoir was an integral part of the city's
Los Angeles Aqueduct water supply infrastructure. It was located in
San Francisquito Canyon of the
Sierra Pelona Mountains, about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of the present day city of
Santa Clarita.
The dam was designed and built between 1924 and 1926 by the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, then named the Bureau of Water Works and Supply. The department was under the direction of its general manager and chief engineer,
William Mulholland.
At 11:57 p.m. on
March 12, 1928, the
dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting
flood killed at least 431 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the
1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The disaster marked the end of Mulholland's career.
