Goiânia

Goiânia is the capital of Goiás, located in the central-western region of Brazil. Goiânia is a planned city like Brasília and Belo Horizonte and was founded on October 24, 1933 by Pedro Ludovico, the governor of the state of Goiás at the time. The city has a population of 1,201,006 inhabitants (according to a 2005 IBGE projection). It is located on a fertile plain criss-crossed by numerous rivers, the most important being the Meia Ponte River. Goiânia is located at the geographic coordinates of 16°40' S, 49°15' W, located 209 km (130 miles) from Brasília, 1,338 km (830 miles) from Rio de Janeiro, 926 km (575 miles) from São Paulo, and 906 km (560 miles) from Belo Horizonte. The total area of the municipality, as of 2002, was 739.5 km².
The Goiânia accident was an incident of radioactive contamination in central Brazil that killed several people and injured many others. On 13 September 1987, an old radiation source was scavenged from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, the capital of the central Brazilian state of Goiás. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths and serious radioactive contamination in 249 others. TIME magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters.