![]() When the tank gave way, the warm molasses spilled out in a huge wave, but it cooled very quickly as it hit the cold air, causing it to become thick and sticky. The researchers believe that the massive amount of molasses did not have time to completely cool down from its trip from the Caribbean and was likely seven to nine degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the chilly Boston air. They then performed experiments in a walk-in refrigerator with corn syrup, which has a similar consistency to molasses, to understand how it flows at different temperatures and to model the molasses incident.Īccording to Erin McCann at The New York Times, the Distillery received a shipment of molasses from Puerto Rico two days before the rupture. Sharp and her team researched historical accounts of the incident as well as National Weather Service data to understand weather conditions in Boston that day. “Oddly enough, that’s exactly what we’re dealing with here, except that this molasses wasn’t slow.” “I’m originally from Arkansas, where we have an old expression: ‘Slow as molasses in January,” Nicole Sharp, aerospace engineer and science communicator who led the group, tells William Kole at the Associated Press. But the question has remained, why did the molasses explode as a wave and not just slowly drip out of the tank? A group of students at Harvard investigated the event and presented their conclusions at recent meeting of the American Physical Society. Though an anarchist terrorist attack was first blamed for the calamity, investigators soon pointed at the holding tank’s shoddy construction. By one estimate, Trex reports, it caused $100 million in damage in today’s dollars. In the end, the sticky tsunami killed 21 people and severely injured 150. It smashed houses and buildings and knocked a firehouse off its foundation. ![]() A 2.3-million-gallon, 26-million-pound wave of the sticky stuff rolled down Commercial Street as fast as 35 miles per hour. So historians and scientists have long been stumped by Boston's 1919 Great Molasses Flood.Įthan Trex at Mental Floss reports that on January 15, 1919, a massive molasses holding tank in Boston’s north end owned by the Purity Distilling Company, which used the treacle to produce alcohol, ripped open. And if you listen to old-timers, even today, hot weather brings a vague, sickly sweet smell to the streets of the North End.Slow as molasses isn’t just a saying- the byproduct of sugar production is usually sticky and viscous, even at room temperature. On warm days for decades after, the neighborhood smelled of molasses. ![]() One of the strangest industrial accidents ever lingered on, and not just in a few safety improvements. Industrial Alcohol Co., the distillery's owner, finally settled the claims for nearly $1 million (about $12 million in today's money). More than a hundred separate lawsuits dragged on until 1925, when the U.S. The victims and their survivors blamed the distillery for faulty construction and unsafe operation. It was the height of the post-World War I Red Scare, and the distillery blamed anarchists, who they said knew the molasses was intended for alcohol to make military ammunition. The mess took months to clean up, and the legal issues even longer. When it was over, more than a score had died, and seven or eight times that number suffered injuries. It knocked them into buildings and other obstacles, it swept them off their feet, and it pulled them under to drown in a viscous, suffocating, brown death. The tank had been filled to near capacity, and 2.3 million gallons of thick, heavy, odorous molasses formed a sticky tsunami that started at 25 or 30 feet high and coursed through the streets at 35 mph.
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