History buffs of Reddit?

What is one of the most fascinating stories you've learned that no one seems to talk about

and can't be found in textbooks?

The Lake Pannier disaster.

Until 1980, Lake Pannier was a small-ish, freshwater lake with a maximum depth of about

10 to 15 feet, located in southern Louisiana.

Locals mostly used it for trout fishing, and it also had a canal running 10 miles from the

lake southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

The main industry of the area was a massive salt mine that stood below the ground, partially

underneath the lake itself.

Thing is, natural salt deposits like this often coincide with oil reserves, so it

wasn't out of the

ordinary when oil companies came searching.

In November of 1980, Texaco had set up a rig in the lake and was doing some exploratory

drilling, hoping to make bank.

Little did they know that one of their triangulation coordinates was slightly off, and so they

had incorrectly guessed the location of the salt mine below their feet.

Their drill bit punched into the roof of the salt deposit about 400 feet earlier than expected,

and water began to drain slowly into the salt.

And what happens when salt meets water?

It dissolves.

As the water dissolved more and more salt, it made more and more room for water to be sucked

...