The Dam That Lasted 40 Days.

Right, happy new year everyone! We're starting with a fairly serious video about a catastrophic disaster casued by negligence, corruption and, unfortunately, complete and utter stupidity.

This is the story of the Gleno Dam, a mammoth dam in the foothills of the Italian Alps. It was originally intended to be a gigantic gravity dam, supplying power to houses and businesses across the Bergamo region, but instead it collapsed just 40 days after it first began operating.

But why? What could possibly have happened to the construction process that could have caused such a tragedy? I visited the remains of the dam to find out.

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Welcome to What On Earth Is This?, a YouTube channel featuring strange and quirky things from around the world that you may not have heard of.

Think abandoned engineering marvels, weird funiculars, transit oddities and other bits of history you never wanted to know about... until now.

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:38 History
03:07 What's a gravity dam?
06:15 A (very stupid) change of plan
08:44 Leaks appear
12:15 The disaster
14:14 Who was to blame?
15:02 Unsatisfactory outcomes
17:12 The end of the saga