The CN Tower had a 31-year streak and then a chunk of ice fell on a pedestrian

This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.

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The CN Tower is located in Toronto, Ontario, defining the city's skyline. The tower is 553.3 metres high and was the world's tallest free-standing structure when it was built in 1976. That title now belongs to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE, which opened in 2010. This is all to say that the CN Tower is high and ice falling from the structure could be extremely dangerous.

And that's what happened on Thursday, Mar. 1, 2007. The GTA was hit with an extreme storm that left thousands without power. Ice formed on the CN Tower, and for the first time, a chunk fell and hit a pedestrian's head.

Nuno Marques was walking along Station Street when the ice fell and knocked him to the ground. He said, “It was like a big bang on the side of my head."

Luckily, Marques wasn't too severely hurt and was able to return to work after some time off to recover.

Throughout Friday and Saturday, the warming temperatures caused more chunks of ice to peel away from the tower, damaging windows, buildings and cars on their way down.

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In 2018, a similar event occurred. This time, the area surrounding the CN Tower was closed, but that couldn't stop a chunk of ice from gouging a hole in the roof of the Rogers Centre. This led to the cancellation of the game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Kansas City Royals.

The game was rescheduled to the next day as a doubleheader; the third doubleheader to be held at the Rogers Centre.

To learn more about these dangerous events, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."

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