Boston Molasses Disaster

[My Good Babushka]

Boston Molasses Disaster 1919. 2.3 million gallons burst out of a weak tank, sending a wave of molasses 8-15 feet high through the North End at 35 miles per hour. It broke the girders of the elevated railway and tore a firehouse from it’s foundation. 21 people drowned, 150 were injured. Clean up took six months. The disaster occurred one day before Prohibition was ratified, the owners were trying to distill as much molasses into alcohol as they could before Prohibition went into effect.

[Recursion]

1. You can still smell it in the North End on hot days (nt)

[NewDeal_Dem]

2. Seriously?

[Aristus]

3. I've heard that.

I wonder if it isn't more the power of suggestion.

[Recursion]

5. That and the fact that molasses is still actually made there (nt)

[Aristus]

6. Okay, that I didn't know.

That takes a little of the wonder out of it, though. The smell of molasses in that case would seem less like a ghost from the past, rising from the pavement in the summer heat, and more like business-as-usual.

[MADem]

7. Not so much anymore with all the urban renewal in the area, but you could about forty years ago.

I have a cousin who works in the area.

[Aristus]

4. Here's a pic of the site of the disaster as it looks today:

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Book rec ...

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780807050217

[Initech]

9. I saw the Boston Molasses Disaster at the Troubadour last week.

They rocked!