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12 of the most unbelievable moments ever captured on live TV

It's hard to believe how many world-altering events were unintentionally broadcast to millions

CNN/YouTube & Robert H. Jackson (29) - Flickr

The Challenger space shuttle tragedy and the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald were both shown live on television.

The first television was invented in 1927. In the early days, much of the programming available was previously recorded. It wasn't until around the 1950s that we had the technology for live broadcast television.

Simply put, live TV changed everything. It was only a few years earlier that the Hindenburg disaster had the world's attention rapt. The incident saw a state-of-the-art Zeppelin flying machine burst into flames without warning, killing 36 people. You might remember, even if you can't place it, the iconic and tragic radio broadcast of the accident: "Oh, the humanity!" Though even that commentary by broadcast journalist Herbert Morrison was recorded live and broadcast to the world much later.

Soon, the biggest most earth-shaking events were being broadcast all over the world live, not just for people to hear, but to see with their own eyes. In some cases, they were even being captured (sometimes unwittingly) before producers had a chance to cut away.

Here are some of the wildest and most famous incidents to have ever occurred in the roughly 75-year history of live television.

1. The second plane hits on 9/11

Almost anyone who was alive in 2001 can tell you where they were the morning of September 11.

Though there is some footage of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, it wasn't until after that impact that news and media began to descend upon the area. No one knew the extent of what was happening at first, except that it was a horrible tragedy. And then the second plane hit the South tower as millions watched in absolute horror, changing the world forever.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

2. Randy Johnson obliterates a bird during MLB game

Not all the crazy things that have happened on live television had such far reaching impacts. And, thankfully, not all of them have been quite as tragic.

Well, I guess we should try telling that to this poor bird. It flew through the middle of a baseball diamond at the worst possible time, getting instantly annihilated by pitcher Randy Johnson's fastball! The freak incident was a one-in-a-million occurrence that's still known as one of the wildest things to ever happen during a pro sports game.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

3. The Challenger tragedy

In 1986 the world watched eagerly as the space shuttle Challenger launched out of Cape Canaveral, Florida with seven crew members aboard. The event was being broadcast live in schools all over the country when the unthinkable happened: The shuttle exploded without warning just 73 seconds into its flight.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

4. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walk on the moon

Thankfully, here's one space flight with a happy ending. In 1969, Apollo 11 took astronauts to the moon for the first manned landing. Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon as millions of onlookers watched on live from their homes, with the help of incredible NASA camera and satellite technology.

(Of course, to this day some people still insist the whole thing was faked!)


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

5. The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald

Though there was much media coverage of JFK's doomed appearance in Dallas in 1963 and, of course, his assassination, the actual moment of his shooting was never shown live on television. However the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, his presumed killer, was.

Just two days later, while being moved through the police station in handcuffs, Oswald was approached and shot by a man named Jack Ruby. The entire thing was captured and broadcast to a huge audience who was tuned-in constantly for updates on the case.

6. Gary Plauche murders his son's kidnapper

It was a horrible story, but all too familiar. No one watching at the time had any idea that they were about to witness a historic and shocking moment.

A man named Jeffrey Doucet had been arrested on charges of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a young boy, and a news crew was waiting for him to arrive in police custody at the airport in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Unbeknownst to Doucet, the police, the reporters, and the live audience, the victimized boy's father was also waiting. Gary Plauche remained incognito until Doucet walked past him, at which point Plauche pulled a gun and shot, killing him.

Plauche did not serve significant time for the murder, receiving a lenient sentence.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


7. A guy wins $250,000 on a scratch-off while being interviewed about a winning a new car on a scratch-off

OK, that was a dark stretch, right? Here's another one-in-a-million moment that's a lot more fun.

In 1998, an Australian man named Bill Morgan was down on his luck. He lived in a truck and nearly died twice in a small period, once from a terrible car crash and then from an allergic reaction to medication. His luck turned around when he won a brand new car on a lottery scratch-off ticket.

A local news station came out to cover Morgan's story and asked him to scratch off another ticket for B-roll footage for the story. In the live video, Morgan is absolutely stunned to find that he won $250,000 on the second ticket.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

8. Magician dies on stage and the audience thinks it's all part of the act

Tommy Cooper, a comedian and magician, was performing on the UK television show Live from Her Majesty's in front of an audience of roughly 12 million people when he suddenly collapsed during an illusion.

The audience, knowing Cooper liked to have a little fun with pretending to fail the trick, began laughing. In reality, Cooper had suffered a heart attack and was dead on arrival by the time he made it to the hospital.

9. Damar Hamlin goes into cardiac arrest on Monday Night Football

About 15 million people watch a typical Monday Night Football game. The audience was likely bigger than that for a highly anticipated showdown between the Bengals and Bills in January of 2023.

Early in the game, after a seemingly routine tackle, Bills safety Damar Hamlin stood up, wobbled, and collapsed to the field. Trainers rushed to his side, and soon, first responders and an ambulance showed up as well. Viewers had very little idea what was happening, except that the stadium was absolutely silent and players on both sidelines were shown crying.

Hamlin had suffered cardiac arrest on the field, more specifically an episode of commotio cordis which is almost always fatal if not treated immediately. The Bills' training staff that rushed to his side saved his life on live television via CPR, and Hamlin eventually returned to NFL duty the next year.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

10. The Max Headroom TV hijacking

Here's a weird one. In November 1987, a masked "hijacker" took over the live feed of WGN-TV in Chicago. The person was dressed as the character Max Headroom. There was no sound or speech for 30 bizarre seconds before station engineers regained control over the television feed.

The same person, later that day, hijacked the feed of another major Chicago station: WTTW. This interruption lasted about 90 seconds and included, well, a lot of extremely strange stuff.

The FCC investigated the incident but were never able to identify the culprits.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

11. Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at The Oscars

Will this incident earn a place in the history books one day? Maybe not. But for a brief moment in 2022, we all thought this was the craziest thing that had ever occurred. Was it all a skit? Was it real? No one knew for sure at first.

I guess you just had to be there.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

12. January 6, 2021

Millions of Americans watched it unfold live in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election as a mob of over 2000 protestors approached and then stormed the US Capitol.

The footage captured by the media present that day is among the most shocking in American history.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


Can you imagine if there were dozens of iPhone videos taken aboard the Titanic as it sank? If someone been trying to sneak a selfie with Abraham Lincoln in the background just as John Wilkes Booth was sneaking up to assassinate him?

It's amazing to think that there will likely never be a major historical or pop culture event that's not captured, if not on live television, at least on self-shot video. On second thought, after seeing some of these videos, maybe that's not such a good thing.

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Heroes

Flight attendant who nearly died on 9/11 commemorates coworkers with a 200-mile bar-cart push

via Paulie's Push

On August 21, Paul "Paulie" Veneto began a historic journey from Logan Airport in Boston to downtown Manhattan in New York City. As a retired flight attendant of 30 years, it's a trip he's taken too many times to count, but this time he's doing it on foot.

In three weeks it will be the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To commemorate the airline personnel that lost their lives on that tragic day, Veneto is pushing a bar cart 200 miles from the 9/11 memorial at Logan Airport to the Ground Zero monument in Manhattan. His journey is appropriately named "Paulie's Push."

Veneto is walking 10 to 20 miles a day and hopes to reach Ground Zero on September 11.

At the time of the attacks, Veneto worked for United Airlines and was routinely on Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, the flight that was rerouted by terrorists into the World Trade Center.

Veneto had the day off on September 11, 2001 and has had to live through the guilt of being a survivor.

"That day sent me into a tailspin of opiate addiction that almost cost me my life," he wrote on his website where he documents his journey. "After almost 15 years of numbing myself out from the thoughts of that day, I have finally been freed from addiction since 2015. I can now finally give tribute to my fallen crew members."

Veneto hopes that his journey will bring attention to the sacrifice the crew members made on a day that will never be forgotten.

"I am doing this because I want these crew members' families to know how courageous they were that day," he wrote. "I want the public to understand that under those conditions that morning, what those crew members did, nobody could have trained for. They really need to be recognized as Heroes. They were the very first First Responders."


On the top of the bar cart, he has the photos of his fellow attendants on Flight 175. He says he won't have any problem finding inspiration during his long push. All he needs to do is take a look at their pictures.

"I look at their faces smiling back at me," Veneto said.

September 11 is a day of pain for Veneto but also a reason to celebrate. On September 11 he will celebrate his sixth year of sobriety. "I turned my life around to be able to recognize these guys who were never recognized," Veneto said. "We all can tell this country and the world that these crew members were heroes on 9/11."

Paulie's Push will benefit the families of his former colleagues as well as Forward 25, a nonprofit that assists people dealing with addiction.

Donations can be made at the Paulie's Push website and checks can be sent to Paulie's Push, in care of First Republic Bank, 160 Federal St., 8th floor, Boston, MA 02110. Attention: Cam Clifford.

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Remember the heroic young 'man in the red bandana' who kept going back to save lives on 9/11

ESPN/YouTube

Welles Crowther's senior quote in his high school yearbook was the simple adage, "There is no 'I' in team." As a lacrosse and hockey player, he lived that motto through sports. As a volunteer firefighter, he lived that motto through service. As as equities trader working on the 104th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, he lived that motto through selfless heroism that saved others' lives and cost him his own.

Crowther was just 24 years old when the planes struck. From that tragic moment until the tower fell, survivors say he led others to safety, repeatedly returning to the 78th floor lobby where people were stranded and guiding them down the one working stairway to where firefighters could take the to a working elevator. He had the opportunity to save himself—if he had gone with the first group of people he rescued, he could have made it out of the building before it collapsed. But he kept going back to save more lives.

ESPN created a beautiful video highlighting Crowther's heroism, told through the voices of his parents, teammates, colleagues, and even some whose lives he directly saved.

The Man in the Red Bandana | SC Featuredwww.youtube.com

Beginning with the red bandana Crowther had kept with him from early childhood and ending with how that bandana ultimately helped uncover the unknown details of his final hours, the tribute is a moving tale of tragedy and courage, selflessness and sacrifice. While every loss on 9/11 should be remembered, Welles Crowther deserves to have his story shared far and wide as an inspiration for us all.

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A cop picked up a donated helmet on 9/11. Months later, he found a note inside.

At 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2017, Roy Guill woke up to a Facebook message from a man he'd never met.

The man, Eric Delman, explained that he'd been going through some stuff from 9/11 for the previous day's anniversary. He wanted to know if Guill was from Staten Island.

But it wasn't Delman's message that struck Guill. It was what Delman was wearing in his profile photo: a yellow, coal miner's helmet with a bracket on the front where the headlamp used to be and a dent in the brim.

“It was a picture of him at Ground Zero on the pile, and I looked at the picture for a second and I thought, 'Holy shit. Is that Papaw’s helmet?'"

Photo via Eric Delman.

In the wee hours of Sept. 11, 2001, Guill was passed out on his boss's couch in their midtown Manhattan office.

He was still asleep when his boss woke him with the news of the attacks a few dozen blocks away.

"The first thing I thought was, 'But it’s such a beautiful day,'" he recalls.

Like thousands of other New Yorkers living and working in the city that day, Guill's account is one of having "just missed" being swallowed up in the carnage. He had stayed the night at work after pulling a long overnight shift. Otherwise, he might have been stranded on the subway under the towers when the planes struck.

Instead, he and a colleague fled the city in a minivan they had rented the previous day.

Guill traveled nearly 200 miles that afternoon: north to Westchester County, south to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, north again to the Tappan Zee Bridge, east to Queens, and south to Brooklyn. When he finally rolled across the Verrazano, it was just after midnight on Sept. 12.

"By that point, the smell had hit us. We rolled down our window to talk to a cop, and you could smell the fire," he says.

The next morning, he and his wife Julia lined up near their Staten Island home to give blood. A nurse turned them away. "There was no one to give blood to," he recalled on Facebook.

Instead, they stocked up on soap, deodorant, and socks from a local dollar store — the only store within walking distance — and prepared to drop them at a collection point near the ferry terminal. On their way out of the house, they stopped at a coat rack by the door. The rack was covered in hats, scarves, jackets — and an an odd item that caught Guill's eye.

A yellow coal mining helmet.

He picked up a pen and a piece of paper.

When Eric Delman, an NYPD officer, arrived downtown Manhattan the afternoon of the attacks, the area was already a ruin.

"It was horrible. That stench of a lot of smoke, and that very bad — the smoke and the smell and the death," he recalls.  

The following day — or maybe the day after — Delman reported to a supply tent. It was full of respirators, work clothing, boots, and helmets. He picked out one that he liked, an "old-style" yellow miner's cap.  

Delman worked on a bucket brigade. He cleared stones. Rebar. Eventually, body parts. He would come home with his clothes covered in a thick gray dust. His wife washed them every day. He seemed haunted.

The yellow miner's helmet stayed with him the whole time. As he dug through "the pile," the mass of rubble left behind when the towers crumbled, the helmet was there. As the news of dead friends trickled in like bilge water, the helmet was there. After Delman's tour at Ground Zero ended, the helmet made its way to a shelf in his garage. Sometimes, he would take it down to look at it. One day, as he was turning it over in his hands, he gasped.

"There's a note!"

Photo by Eric Delman.

A small, creased tab of white paper was stuck to the inside. He had never noticed it before.

"To whoever wears this," it read. "This was my grandfather's helmet in the mines of Kentucky. I hope it protects you well. You are all heroes."

The note was signed, "Roy and Julia Guill."

Guill's papaw, Roy W. Guill, was born, grew up, raised seven children, worked, and died in Carrsville, Kentucky.

One of the few pictures of Papaw that remains was taken before his brief detour to the Pacific theater of World War II, where he served as a combat engineer. He never talked about it.

Roy W. Guill. Photo via Roy Guill.

Papaw wore bib overalls. Some nights, on his way home, he would save his granddaughter Angi a treat leftover from his lunchpail. When Guill told him he wanted to chew tobacco, Papaw tried to dissuade him by giving him a pinch of Prince Albert. He warned him not to swallow it — about three seconds too late.

When Papaw woke up at 5 a.m. to go to work, Guill would sit with him, nodding off between bites of pancake as his grandfather suited up in a side room near a potbellied stove. When he went off to the mine, the helmet went with him.

Papaw passed away at age 81, when Guill was 14. After the funeral, Guill's father gave his grief-stricken son the helmet.

It was the only physical reminder of his grandfather Guill possessed.

Or, it had been.

On Sept. 11, 2017, Guill took the day off from work — as he occasionally does on the anniversary of the attacks.

He rarely talks about what he saw that day 16 years earlier.

"It’s so hard, and emotionally it’s such a slog, but we were so lucky," he says.

The Facebook message from Delman was like a bolt out of the blue.

After Guill confirmed that, yes, he was from Staten Island, Delman sent a photo: the same photo Guill had seen in Delman's profile picture.

"Does this look familiar?" Delman wrote. "This is me at the time."

Photo via Eric Delman.

The photo of Delman wearing the helmet had been taken by a fellow officer shortly after the attacks. When that friend fell ill 10 years later, he found and sent the photo to Delman. This year, Delman made it his profile photo to commemorate the anniversary.

Guill had often wondered what happened to Papaw's hard hat from the mines. He worried it had been thrown out, that it hadn't been up to code, or had been overlooked in a vast sea of donated tools and gear. Here, finally, was proof: Not only had someone — Delman — used it, it had meant enough to him that he kept it.

"Honestly, I sat here in my dining room and bawled my eyes out," Guill says.

Delman is now a lieutenant who oversees the 88th Precinct's Special Operations Unit. His time at Ground Zero left him with nodules in his lungs. He gets them checked every year. So far, so good.

He told Guill to expect the helmet on his doorstep soon.

"There’s a box on my kitchen table for me to send it back," he says. Before he does, he wants to add a few touches. A T-shirt, perhaps, with some patches. Some coins. Maybe both.

It may take a while to reach its destination. Guill left New York 13 years ago. He lives in Las Vegas now. He imagines it will show up in about a week.

Guill doesn't know if he's prepared. But his papaw's helmet is coming home.

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