As the example I'm most familiar with, this bridge should not have failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge https://en.wikipedia.org

As the example I'm most familiar with, this bridge should not have failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge The state of the art in the first half of the '60s was good enough to design such a bridge correctly, but the gusset plates that connect girders together were undersized. Then there's the famous example of Boston's Hancock Tower, which was designed and built per the current state of the art and code, but it turned out that did not consider some important things that could have caused it to collapse along its long, narrow side: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/5826 http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/5826