Top 20 Craziest Events Caught On Live TV of the Century (So Far)

2015

We’ll start things off on a lighter note, if only to ease our way into some heavy stuff. Back in 2015, Miss Universe held its 64th pageant, but instead of it being memorable for the planned theatrics, it was a late-show gaffe that made it live in infamy. Television personality and host of the event Steve Harvey went to announce the pageant winner, reading Miss Colombia’s name, Ariadna Gutiérrez. Trouble was, Gutiérrez didn’t come in first place, but rather first runner up, which was on the card. After Gutiérrez was already crowned, Harvey returned to the stage to admit his mistake, and reveal Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach as the actual winner. This won’t be the only award show flub on this list.

2006

The World Cup is a true event of international comradery as countries from around the globe come together to compete in the world’s game. At least, it should be. The 2006 edition in Germany saw the final match get ugly with one of the basest acts of poor sportsmanship ever witnessed. With just minutes left to play in extra time, France midfielder Zinedine Zidane headbutted Italy’s Marco Materazzi squarely in the chest. Though it’s been contested exactly what Materazzi said to Zidane to provoke him, the action was unacceptable, as referees subsequently ejected Zidane. Italy would later win in a penalty shootout, but it’s undeniable that the entirety of the World Cup was overshadowed by this incident.

2010

Unless you’re a gangster in a mafia movie, you don’t really expect the poker game you’re participating in to be robbed at gunpoint. But that’s exactly what happened in 2010 at a televised tournament in Germany. The broadcast shows the main table, before players and spectators in the background begin to panic at something off-screen. It turns out that four masked assailants were in the process of robbing the event for the winnings, and initially made out with the equivalent of $327,000. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured and the robbers were later caught, but talk about a scary moment for all those involved.

2004

Is this the most infamous lip syncing fiasco of all time? No. But it’s definitely the most infamous of the 21st century so far. In 2004, then twenty-year-old Ashlee Simpson appeared on “Saturday Night Live” as a musical guest. Her first song, “Pieces of Me,” went off without a hitch, but her second, “Autobiography,” ended up being “Pieces of Me,” again. The lyrics of the first song were heard playing over the band during the second, revealing that Simpson had been lip syncing the whole time. Simpson and host Jude Law later tried to play it off as an innocent mixup, but viewers were not fooled. It’s a good thing the show includes the word “Live” in its title..

2005

In 2005, passengers aboard JetBlue Flight 292 got quite the scare when the pilots couldn’t retract the front landing gear, with the wheel perpendicular to the fuselage. Unable to fix it, the pilots underwent a holding pattern for over two hours, thus using up fuel and reducing the risk of a fire breaking out upon landing. During this time, passengers were able to watch live coverage of the story on the plane’s built-in satellite TVs. Upon initiating a landing at LAX, the pilots were able to keep the nose of the plane up for as long as possible before touching down on the faulty landing gear. Sparks flew, but the plane ultimately stopped at the end of the runway with zero injuries.

2009

Yes, the aviation incident that never actually was. As many will remember, back in 2009, it was reported by Richard and Mayumi Heene that their six-year-old son Falcon was carried off in a helium-filled balloon. The National Guard followed the balloon for about fifty miles over Colorado, but when the balloon finally touched down, Falcon was nowhere to be found. Except, however, in the attic of his own home, where he’d actually been the whole time. Initially crazy for the purported danger of the situation, the story became crazy for a whole other reason when the Heenes were accused of operating a hoax, a fact Falcon seemingly confirmed in a later interview with CNN. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

2009

It was the mic grab heard around the world. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift won the Best Female Video award for her song “You Belong with Me,” but Kayne West had a differing opinion. During her acceptance speech, Swift had her microphone promptly stolen by an incoming West, who tried to put the spotlight on Queen B, but only put it squarely on himself. West was widely lambasted for the incident, with many claiming that his retribution for Beyoncé unfairly marred Swift’s achievement. Plenty of fallout has come in the years since, but suffice to say, Kanye West did not do his Kanye best, and the Kanye rest is history.

2009

It’s astounding how one evil act of violence can turn such a happy occasion into one of terror. In April 2009, the city of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands held a parade during the holiday Koninginnedag, or “Queen’s Day.” Queen Beatrix and other members of the royal family were in attendance, and were sadly the targets of an attack carried out by a man in a Suzuki Swift. None of them were harmed by the vehicle, but tragically seven spectators were killed in addition to the attacker himself. The motive behind the attack remains unclear, but what is clear is just how dark a day this was not only for live TV, but human decency.

2007

Sometimes our actions can have far-reaching consequences, as is the case here. During a police pursuit in Phoenix, Arizona in 2007, various news stations dispatched their helicopters to cover the developing story. Tragically, the story developed into something entirely different when two of the helicopter pilots failed to account for the other vehicle and collided. The helicopters then crashed within the same general vicinity, killing all four occupants - the two pilots and the two photographers. The other helicopters and news stations were quick to report on the accident, marking a morbid, meta turn on the whole ordeal.

2017

Let’s go back to presenting fails for a minute to liven things up a little, shall we? In much the same vein as the Miss America pageant, the 89th Academy Awards ended things on a wild note when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced “La La Land” as the recipient for Best Picture. During the acceptance speeches, crew members scrambled to correct the mistake before “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz cleared things up by announcing “Moonlight” as the actual winner. Reportedly, Beatty and Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope which led to the confusion, but no explanation will ever make us forget the shock of this live moment.

2011

Rioting after sporting events is nothing new. Heck, it was nothing new for the city of Vancouver, as residents had previously done so following the Canucks’ 1994 Stanley Cup Finals loss to the New York Rangers. But it was the team’s decisive Game 7 defeat at the hands of the Boston Bruins in 2011 that really set the world ablaze. Despite the city’s best efforts to prepare for such a reaction, over a hundred people were injured in the event, and approximately $5 million in damages were racked up. In addition to the live coverage, countless iconic images of the event were taken, leading many to wonder if people take their sports just a bit too seriously.

2004

Again, sometimes the events surrounding sports are more noteworthy than the games themselves. In a moment that will live in television infamy, the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show featured artists Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Unfortunately for all involved, their performance ended with Timberlake accidentally revealing Jackson’s breast. Though Jackson was wearing a nipple shield, the incident created a media firestorm, from condemnations to conspiracy theories and even to those downplaying the whole thing. It also largely led to a blacklisting of Jackson and her music, leading many to question the double standard regarding men and women. Whatever your stance, this is one event that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

2015

Whereas the 20th century saw a pair of people take their own lives live on camera, this is something else entirely. In 2015, WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward were conducting an early-morning interview in Moneta, Virginia when they and their interviewee were attacked by a lone gunman. Both Parker and Ward were killed, while interviewee Vicki Gardner survived following surgery. Their attacker was Vester Lee Flanagan, a disgruntled former employee of the station that had been fired two years earlier, who later succumbed to self-inflicted gunshot wounds sustained during a police chase later that day. Whatever the circumstances, this is one horrific act of violence that had the unfortunate distinction of occuring on live TV.

2001

We all know how dangerous NASCAR can be, but that still doesn’t prepare you for what can happen when things really do go wrong. A titan of the sport, Dale Earnhardt - along with his son Dale Earnhardt Jr. - made sure the surname was synonymous with the sport of race car driving. Which is why his sudden death during the last lap of the Daytona 500 was so surreal for millions of viewers. As the footage shows, Earnhardt’s car made slight contact with another car, causing him to lose control and slam into the wall at around 160 mph. Sadly, emergency responders were unable to revive him, and suffice it to say, Earnhardt’s death prompted further safety measures to be enforced.

2010

Similarly to Vester Lee Flanagan, Rolando Mendoza was someone who took to horrendous tactics to try and rectify what he believed to be mistreatment. Mendoza was a former officer for the Philippine National Police who had been formally let go in 2009 due to charges of extortion. In 2010, Mendoza held an entire tour bus hostage in Manila, demanding he be reinstated. After an intense ten-hour standoff, negotiations broke down dramatically, resulting in gunfire. Mendoza took the lives of eight hostages before a SWAT team was able to deliver a fatal shot of their own. With news outlets covering the incident from start to finish, this was one horrifying event the world experienced in real time.

2010

Now here’s a disaster story with an uplifting example of human resilience and teamwork. In August 2010, a cave-in occurred at a copper and gold mine in northern Chile, trapping thirty-three workers roughly 2,300 feet below the surface. Sixty-nine days passed, but through the combined efforts of the Chilean government and various organizations from around the world, all thirty-three men were winched up safely one-at-a-time, almost entirely unharmed. This being a major story for months, millions of people watched as the tireless efforts of those involved finally came to fruition. Hollywood wishes it could write endings this good.

2005

The advent of Hurricane Katrina to the contiguous United States similarly brought out the best of humanity, as relief efforts were extensive and far-reaching. However, that pales in comparison to the intensity of the storm itself, which caused over 1,800 deaths and $125 billion in damages, primarily in the New Orleans area. Our eyes were glued to our screens as images literally flooded in of waves pounding the shores and displacing tens of thousands of people with few immediate resources. Though we’ve gotten plenty of nasty storms since, few made quite as big of an impact both culturally and physically like Katrina in 2005.

2021
And now we shift back to humanity at its most inane. Both the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections in which Donald Trump ran for office were contentious, but the latter had a far greater fallout upon Trump’s defeat to former vice president Joe Biden. With reports swirling that the election had been rigged, many of them perpetuated by Trump himself, hundreds of his supporters took to the Capitol Building in an attempt to disrupt Congress and overturn the results. Five people died in and around the event, and hundreds more police officers were injured attempting to detain the crowd. Never before has US politics gotten this ugly.

2011

You didn’t need to be in eastern Japan to feel the shockwaves of this disaster. On March 11, 2011, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake began roughly forty-five miles off the Japanese coast, causing a tsunami with a wave upwards of 130 feet that absolutely devastated the mainland. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the tsunami in turn caused the meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, prompting even further evacuations. All things considered, over 19,000 people lost their lives in what was easily one of the most appalling chain of disasters in recorded history.

2001

Despite now having occurred over twenty years ago, the attacks on the morning of September 11th, 2001 are still being felt to this day. It was a watershed moment not only for the United States, but the entire world, sparking indelible sentiments of patriotism and xenophobia for decades to come. It was such a horrific display of human atrocity that the live TV coverage as it was unfolding affected millions upon millions of people on a deep, emotional level. Those of us old enough to remember will never forget where we were as we watched the second tower of the World Trade Center fall in real time. In such a short window, it felt as though the world had changed forever.