Passers-by who saw the start of the disaster described hearing the rivets ripping out of the metal sides of the tank like machine-gun bullets, followed by the intense vibrations of the collapsing molasses tank. It is possible that the molasses was overheated due to the unseasonably warm January temperatures that day, which caused the rivets on the huge molasses tank to rupture. On this particular day, the 15th of January, 1919, a 50ft (approx 16.5m) high tank of molasses collapsed, spilling its sweet ooze all over town. One of the things that the Distillery produced was molasses, which was then the main sweetener in the United States, as opposed to honey or maple-syrup. In the northern end of Boston’s downtown area were the facilities belonging to the Purity Distilling Company a manufactury of alcohol and other, alochol-related products. But today, and indeed, the next four days, would be shaken by an event so catastrophic, so weird and so…sweet…that Bostonians still think about it today. Paper-boys made their rounds, milk and ice were delivered, people went to work. The 15th of January, 1919 started out like any other in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, on the USA’s east coast. The number of dead and wounded would soon rise to 21 and 150, respectively Here is just a handful of natural and manmade disasters which, though famous in their own times, in some cases comparable to 9/11, are barely remembered today…Īn early newspaper-report about the flood. Events of great interest and fascination which you’d only stumble across by accident and which, once you have, find incredibly fascinating or strange and unique. "All the things we now take for granted in the business - that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at projects - all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case," explains Puleo.The nice thing about history is that it’s full of all kinds of weird, wonderful, whimsical little things that nobody thinks about, knows about, cares about or reads about. The case also completely changed the relationship between business and government. The case was historic in many ways.Īccording to Puleo, the case set the stage for future class action lawsuits and was "the first case in which expert witnesses were called to a great extent - engineers, metallurgists, architects, technical people." Immediately following the flood, 119 plaintiffs filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. Rescue efforts continued for days, and cleanup took even longer. As it spilled out, it cooled and thickened, trapping survivors in the mess. Two days before the accident, a new shipment of hot molasses had been added to the tank, so when it burst, the molasses inside might have been slightly warmer than the outside air. Supposedly, you can still smell the molasses when it gets hot enough. A lot of that potential energy that you had from stacking this thing up really high is going to turn into kinetic energy. ![]() ![]() Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer and science educator, explains: "You basically have a giant stack of something that's really heavy and as soon as you remove whatever's holding that - in this case, the walls of the tank - all of that's gonna rush out. When the company received complaints that the tank was leaking, it painted the tank brown to disguise the leaks rather than repair them.īesides the structural aspects of the tank, researchers have explored how the scientific properties of the molasses itself explain why the flood was so destructive. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, had rushed to build it, employing an overseer who was an expert in finance, not engineering. ![]() On top of that, the steel that they used, although it was state-of-the-art of the day, we know today that it could be relatively brittle under certain circumstances." Whoever did the design failed to provide the adequate thickness of the steel. However, "one thing is very clear: it was under-designed. According to Ronald Mayville, an engineer who researches the flood in his spare time, there is no surefire reason the tank failed.
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