The Molasses Flood, the Halifax Explosion and the Galveston Hurricane are three disasters that most folks are unfamiliar with.
Add to that, The Bath School Bombing and Port Chicago, CA Disaster
The reason it exploded was they filled the tank to the max due to Prohibition coming into law during a cold spell - then the usual January thaw happen and the rest is history.
Another use for the molasses was to distill alcohol from it to make munitions.
Read the “Dark Tide”.
One claim is that the coming Volstead Act "inspired" sabotage
(yeah, yeah, "no sabotage found"), allowing the company to
collect on the insurance.
Another claim is that on hot sultry days, you can still smell the
molasses. Between nor'easters, storms, and hurricanes, I do
find that hard to believe.
As for Halifax, they send a tree to Boston every Christmas as a
"thank you" for the aid train sent immediately after the French
ship blew up in the harbor. A Montreal aid train derailed.
There's a "recent" dramatized movie on it. "Agent Scully" plays
a woman pulled from the rubble. (Yes, I read the credits)
The British officer whose waiving of the commonsense rules that
contributed to the disaster was reassigned to Boston. The
French captain that abandoned his burning ship that "drifted"
deeper into the harbor before it exploded, got medals for
services (after Halifax) during the rest of WWI.
The Galveston disaster happened in the early days of understanding
the power of hurricanes. Not that it stops people from living
in hurricane-prone areas today. There's documentary on what
Galveston did to raise the level of the island and add seawalls
after the hurricane. The environazis would be dropping dead
of apoplexia if it were done today. By all rights, Galveston
should have been renamed Fishkill.
Add the Charleston earthquake of 1886, the great New Madrid series of earthquakes of 1811-12, the Black Tom explosion in NY harbor, 1916?, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and the Johnstown Flood in PA. I think the Galveston Hurricane (est. 8,000) and the Johnstown Flood (est. 2,000) were the most deadly. Oh, and let’s not forget the Caribbean ring of fire volcanos of 1902: Pelee in Martinique (est. 35,000 to 40,000), La Soufriere in St. Vincent (est. 2 to 4,000), Santa Maria in Guatemala (est. 5,000), and 2 others in Central America with fewer casualties.
McKinley's fault. Those darn Republicans.
The Texas City Disaster dwarfs the Molasses Flood on body count, and is at least equally obscure for most.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster