Chimney stacks once lined many city skylines across America and Europe and became extremely popular during the 1800’s Industrial Revolution, which began the shift from hand made products to machine made. Also known as flue-gas stacks, the chimneys are used as an exhaust method for industrial furnaces, steam boilers, and other similar heat and smoke producers. The concept of the flue-gas stack was developed in the mid-1600s, before the concept expanded some 200 years later.
As American and European industries have started to move away from industrial manufacturing, many chimney stacks have begun to be demolished for new development. Last year, two Scottish power station chimneys were demolished simultaneously in a video that made our list of best demolition videos of 2015. The current tallest chimney in the world is in Kazakhstan, standing at 1377 feet (419.7m) and was built in 1987, the United Kingdom’s second largest chimney used to be the Chimney of Grain Power Station, before a week ago. Built in 1979, the Grain Power Station Chimney stood 801 feet tall (244m) in Kent, England and weighed approximately 44,000 tons (40,000 tonnes). The power station that it accompanied was closed in 2012, in order to make use of a new onsite gas-fired power station.
You can check out some incredible drone footage, shot by Luke Sanders, of the demolition that turned the chimney into a big dust pile below:
Full story: Landmark Kent power station chimney blown up in tallest concrete demolition job carried out in UK | The Telegraph
In November of last year, the 546 foot tall Mina Plaza in Abu Dhabi officially broke the world record for tallest demolition by explosion, supplanting Hudson Department Store in Detroit, Michigan, which held the record for 22 years.