Posted on 01/15/2018 6:32:51 AM PST by harpygoddess
On January 15, 1919, a tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing an estimated 26 million pounds burst open, unleashing a sticky flood onto Boston's North End. The 25-foot high wave of goo oozed over the streets at 35 miles per hour, crushing buildings in its wake and killing 21 people.
The wave broke steel girders of the Boston Elevated Railway, almost swept a train off its tracks, knocked buildings off their foundations, and toppled electrical poles, the wires hissing and sparking as they fell into the brown flood. The Boston Globe reported that people 'were picked up and hurled many feet'. Rivets popping from the tank scourged the neighborhood like machine gun bullets, and a small boat was found slammed through a wooden fence like an artillery shell. By the time it passed, the wave had killed 21 people, injured 150, and caused damage worth $100 million in today's money. All caused by molasses.
At the time, molasses was a standard sweetener in the United States, used in cooking and in fermentation to make ethanol, which in turn could be made into a liquor used as an ingredient in munitions manufacture, an aspect of the business that had been booming during the First World War.
The tank was never rebuilt. The site where it stood is now a public park with bocce (Italian boules) courts and Little League baseball fields, slides and swings. All that remains of that terrible day 90 years ago is a small plaque at the entrance of the recreational complex. Yet local residents insist a faint smell lingers to this day. They say that on warm summer days the air is still tinged with the sweet, cloying scent of molasses.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
Besides sending shrapnel whizzing through the air, the explosion flattened people, horses and buildings with a huge shockwave. As some tried to get to their feet, the sudden vacuum where the tank once was created a reverse shockwave, sucking air in and knocking people, animals and vehicles around once more, and shaking homes off their foundations. That was just the first few seconds. The real terror was about to begin.
The tank had been filled to near capacity, and 2.3 million gallons of thick, heavy, odorous molasses formed a sticky tsunami that started at 25 or 30 feet high and coursed through the streets at 35 mph...
When it was over, more than a score had died, and seven or eight times that number suffered injuries. The mess took months to clean up, and the legal issues even longer."
So the speed of molasses in January is 35 mph........................
I guess it could have been worse.
I remember my grandmother telling me that you could smell molasses for years later.
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Also Boston’s slowest news day.
One irony is that this flood gave rise to the express, “slower than molasses in January.” Yet the molasses were reported to be flowing at 25 to 35 mph, which is pretty fast.
First documented deaths due to “global warming”, the tank was filled on a cold winter’s day then came apart due to a warm day in January.
I learned all about this on “Drunk History”
Yet the five-story storage facility was never properly tested - by filling it with water - because a shipload of molasses was due only days after the completion of the tank in December 1915.
Interesting video at the site. For years, the tank would leak molasses when filled and it would groan whenever it was filled, reflecting substandard construction. A sudden warm spell in January likely pressurized the contents enough to rupture the tank.
Yes...were (and are) a lot of old buildings in there, and I heard the same thing...that when you went down into the cellars and such, the smell was very strong for years.
2.3 m gal?????????
that’s a hole $h!tPota stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jus’ Plain Dick@Planet WTF!
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Man, that was a lot of potentially good cookies going down the drain.
Finally, the dark tide strikes back in the heart of white privilege, in anachronistic honor of MLK Day! Oh, sorry. Thanks harpygoddess. Digest ping, because I may not have done one this past weekend.
Train spills mayo, molasses in Beaver County
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | Monday, January 06, 2003 | The Associated Press
Posted on 01/06/2003 8:48:51 AM PST by Willie Green
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:34:56 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
KEYWORDS: dontupsetus; holdthelettuce; holdthepickles; specialorders; Click to Add Keyword
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/817673/posts
Death by suffocation. I can sense the panic somebody must feel as they are enveloped in Molasses.
Area must have had an infestation of Cockroaches for years afterwards.
Very interesting!
That’s a whole lot of bottles of bbq sauce.
What’s worse, Being Boston, they had no hot buttered biscuits for eating the molasses
They could put it on their ‘flapjacks’....................
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