“Incredibly, CNN’s Lou Dobbs didn’t mention the transformer explosion at all during his 6pm newscast,” observes TVNewswer.

But you know who did mention it? The Daily Mail (UK)! Good thing they totally kept things in perspective, though, as evidenced by their modest and completely understated headline, “Explosion Tears Through New York In Replay Of September 11 Panic.”

“An underground steam pipe explosion tore through a Manhattan street near Grand Central Terminal last night, swallowing a tow truck and killing one person as hundreds of others ran for cover amid a towering geyser of steam and flying rubble in scenes reminiscent of the panic after the September 11 terrorist attack,” writes the Daily Mail in a crazy, reactionary run-on sentence of a lede.

Which we found incredibly funny, both because of the intentionally misleading apocalyptic headline and because the first paragraph is so ominous and fatalistic, that most bleary-eyed commuters doubtless read it twice, or perhaps three times before realizing that the explosion was just a glorified plumbing problem rather than a terrorist attack.

Equally as impressive, however, was the chilling photograph of a New York City street, smoke billowing up in the background, and flip-flops strewn about the foreground, with a brilliantly melodramatic caption reading, “In their terror, people ran so fast from the blast that they left their shoes behind on the pavement.”

July 18th, to be forever known as the day of the “crazy, almost terrorist-attack, that was really just a big Con Ed fuckup, but hey, at least we got out of work by 6.”

Also: The day the homeless bag lady down the street got her very first pair of Manolo Blahniks.

Original post by Perez Hilton and software by Elliott Back