When you have B&M Brown Bread in a can, you don't need biscuits, bu do bring on the butter - or cream cheese. 
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 ...
OK - had to go re-learn why and how molasses is made.
They also didnt take into account fermentation rate and gas pressures produced from the bottom up in the huhe tank.
Oooh, I think this was an episode on the awesome “Seconds from Disaster”!
My Grandfather used to tell this story.
And 14 years before that review, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a story on December 28, 1872 about the secret investigation of the Credit Mobilier scandal. The newspaper reported that:
Most of them had the matter under advisement for seven or eight months before they could satisfy their consciences as to the moral bearing of the transaction, showing that the average Congressional perception of right and wrong is much slower than molasses in January.
The fact that this event occurred in January is either a cruel irony or an ironic vindication.
If I had my druthers, I would prefer to die in London’s Great Beer Flood of 1814:
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-London-Beer-Flood-of-1814/
When you have B&M Brown Bread in a can, you don't need biscuits, bu do bring on the butter - or cream cheese.
Kinda reminds me of a great WC Fields line...his wife is hassling him about his drinking and says "Someday you'll *drown* in a vat of whiskey" and he responds (under his breath) "Drown in a vat of whiskey? Death where is thy sting?"
Brown Bread! Toasted. Butter. Heaven
My wife is a dietitian. I just told her about this. Her comment? “Too much food can kill.”
When I was a kid my mom kept molasses on hand as a standard sweetener.
Are you sure that's spelled correctly?
Dad took us up to Boston last summer and we went to the site of the Molasses flood...
Very sharp of you Sparky1776 (carbon dioxide no less):
That January's relatively balmy, 40-degree Fahrenheit weather may have increased pressure as carbon dioxide built up inside. Before the rupture, the molasses inside the tank was likely 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding air, thanks to a fresh shipment of syrup from the Caribbean. The higher temperature may have helped the molasses spread over the Boston waterfront at such an alarming pace. http://vaviper.blogspot.com/2017/01/jan-15-1919-bostons-23-million-gallon.html
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