On May 8, 1842, at Versailles, France, (enough commas for you?) a train returning to Paris with revellers who were celebrating the King at the Palace of Versailles crashed after the lead locomotive broke an axle. The carriages accordioned into the locomotive and caught fire. All told, 55 passengers died.
Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville, explorer, that's him up above, was probably the most famous of the victims of this wreck. He and his entire family perished. Oddly enough, his remains were identified using the now quackified science of phrenology. It seems Dumont allowed his head to be inspected and mapped and a cast taken at some point just before the accident. In what was probably a forensic first, a phrenologist identified his body by comparing his head lumps to the cast.
The horror of the accident lay however, in the European practice of the time of LOCKING the passengers into their carriages for the journey. On top of that, the carriages had just been smartly re-painted in honour of the celebrations. Just what an out of control coal fire needs. They stopped locking passengers in trains after this incident.
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