100 years ago in Boston: The day molasses was deadly fast
Posted January 14, 2019 6:10 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Boston is marking the 100th anniversary of its most peculiar disaster — the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.
Exactly a century ago Tuesday, a massive wave of 2.3 million gallons (8.7 million litres) of molasses unleashed by a ruptured storage tank came crashing through the city’s North End, obliterating everything in its path.
Twenty-one people were killed, along with dozens of horses, and 150 were injured.
This molasses was anything but slow. Historians say the initial wave of goop raced through the neighbourhood at 35 miles per hour (56 kilometres per hour) — so fast not even Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt could have outrun it.
Suspicion at first fell on anarchists who were active at the time. But investigators determined the hulking tank was built with the same type of flawed steel used in the Titanic.
William J. Kole, The Associated Press
