Disasters: Shattering Records

U.S. motorists have long had their own way of commemorating the nation's war dead on Memorial Day. They take to streets and highways, smash into each other, and create more dead. On Memorial Day last week, they managed to kill 159 peopleĀ—a record-shattering performance that far surpassed the previous high of 109 in 1956.

Perhaps the unhappiest example of Memorial Day slaughter occurred near Cornwall, Conn. A sports car in which two young men were leaving a beer party climbed a grade along Bunker Hill on a clear afternoon, somehow skidded into the wrong lane, crashed head-on into a sedan....

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