Hindenburg Mystery Solved 76 Years Later: Static Electricity Caused Infamous, Deadly 1937 Airship Explosion [VIDEO]

After 76 years, a team of researchers at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Tex. have finally discovered what caused the iconic explosion of the ill-fated and iconic Hindenburg airship, static electricity.

According to the Daily Mail, the researchers discovered that the German airship began to build up static electricity as it passed through a storm on its way to a the docking station at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey (the tower in the famous photograph). At the same time, a broken wire or gas valve leaked hydrogen into the ventilation shafts of the Hindenburg. When ground crews in New Jersey grabbed a hold of the ship's landing ropes, they effectively 'grounded' the aircraft and this caused a spark, igniting the leaking helium and producing the photographed fireball.

The image of the Hindenburg exploding ran in newspapers throughout the world and effectively doomed the dream of hydrogen-filled airship travel by causing a negative association with the transport. Airships were viewed as unsafe in the wake of the disaster (even though the majority of passengers on the airship survived the explosion).

 Up until that point, airships were considered the wave of the future. They could cross the Atlantic at almost three times the speed of a ship.

Jem Stansfield, a British aeronautical engineer and the lead researcher on the experiment that found the cause of the explosion, set fire to scale model blimps of lengths up to 78 feet to prove his hunch.

Investigators at the time realized that the disaster was the result of igniting hydrogen, however could not come to an agreement as to what caused the leak or the spark.

According to the Independent, the researchers' aim was to rule out conspiracy theories that the Hindenburg disaster was a result of a terrorist plot or explosive materials in the blimp's paint.

Check out a video detailing the story below: