Pulling the plug on a 1300 acre lake

Somehow I missed this one when I read all those disaster books as a kid. In 1980 an oil rig in a New Orleans lake penetrated the shaft of a salt mine below, and drained 3.5 billon gallons of water:

Concluding that something had gone terribly wrong, the men on the rig cut the attached barges loose, scrambled off the rig, and moved to the shore about 300 yards away. Shortly after they abandoned the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, the crew watched in amazement as the huge platform and derrick overturned, and disappeared into a lake that was supposed to be shallow. Soon the water around that position began to turn. It was slow at first, but it steadily accelerated until it became a fast-moving whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site.

(via digg, iirc)