Made of the Mist

From time to time, something goes wrong with a taken-for-granted piece of infrastructure, and we remember the crucial, unheralded role it plays in our interconnected world. Perhaps, for example, we have forgotten that the Suez Canal carries 10 percent of global trade. But then the Ever Given gets stuck, with its 20,000 shipping containers full of goodies, and suddenly we’re all transfixed by a 193-kilometre ditch in the middle of the Egyptian desert.

Something similar happened on June 7, 1956, when 100,000 tons of rock came tumbling down on the Schoellkopf generating station, just below Niagara Falls. As the hydroelectric plant, once the largest in the world, crumbled into the Niagara River, the lights went out for much of New York State. On the other side of the gorge, Ontario Hydro sent electricity across the international border to help keep American factories running, but...