Today marks the 100th year anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, which inundated Boston’s North End sending a wall of molasses, killing 21 and injuring 150.
The Purity Distilling Company built a large molasses storage tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End to store molasses until it could be distilled into alcohol. In early January 1919, just a few days before the disaster, a ship had discharged a full load of molasses into the tank. When the cargo was discharged, the weather was cold, only around 4 degrees F. Then on January 15th, the temperature rose suddenly to an unseasonably warm 40 degrees.
The molasses began to expand stressing the steel of the 54 high and 90-foot diameter tank. The tank groaned and wept molasses from the tank seams under the load. Then at around 12:30 in the afternoon, when the streets were occupied with workers from the distillery and local factories breaking for lunch, there was a sound like gunfire as the tank’s rivets popped and the steel plates ripped open. The tank collapsed, dumping 2,300,000 US gallons of molasses in a 25-foot high wall of molasses surging through the streets at a speed estimated to be 35 mph (56 km/h). Twenty-one died and 150 were injured.
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