Just stumbled onto this, and thought it might be interesting. I knew about the 1944 fire, but I didn’t know about the part in parentheses.
On July 6, 1944, some 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut. (One of the survivors of the blaze was future actor Charles Nelson Reilly, who was 13 at the time.)
