The Window That Would Not Break: The Las Vegas Temple's Celestial-Room Glass and the Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989)

On October 17, 1989, the 7.1-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area just before the third game of the World Series at Candlestick Park. It was the worst earthquake the region had seen since 1906: it collapsed a section of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and caused nearly $3 billion in damage in San Francisco alone.

On that very day, the great window destined for the celestial room of the Las Vegas Nevada Temple was hanging in a sling at a glass factory in Santa Cruz, near the earthquake's epicenter, waiting to be polished and then shipped to the temple. The window had taken six weeks to make, and the temple's open house was only two weeks away. When the tremor hit, the window swung wildly in its sling — but amazingly escaped any damage, even as other glass projects in the same factory were shattered and ruined beyond repair. The window arrived at the temple intact, one week before the temple opened for public viewing.