This Bridge Lasted Four Months, Then Became One of the World's Biggest Reefs

On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge — nicknamed "Galloping Gertie" for the way it visibly rolled and bounced in the wind from the day it opened — twisted apart and collapsed into Puget Sound after just four months in service, in a disaster captured on film that remains one of the most studied engineering failures in history. The only fatality was a cocker spaniel named Tubby, left behind in an abandoned car. This video traces the full story of Galloping Gertie: the flexible design philosophy that doomed it, the aeroelastic flutter that tore it apart, the ten-year gap before its replacement opened in 1950, and what happened to the original wreckage — still resting on the floor of Puget Sound today as a protected historic site and one of the world's largest artificial reefs.