The Blackout of 1965

On November 9th, 1965, I was getting ready for a date and asked my sister if she would iron a shirt I wanted to wear. As she plugged in the iron the lights in the apartment went off.

At first, we thought a fuse was blown but upon looking out the window we saw that the entire neighborhood was dark. It turns out that what occurred was the biggest power failure in history with New York, nearby states and parts of Canada completely blacked out.

It was determined that the cause was the tripping of a 230 kilovolt transmission line near Ontario Canada. It took several days to get the lights back on.