Sind iverythin' you cansomethin' tirrible has happened!". The flood had occurred during a period of increased terrorist activity from Italian anarchist groups, which had previously been blamed for dozens of bombings across the country. There were a lot of bad signs in this, said Sharp. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. To make matters worse, a man immersed in molasses will not get anywhere with the kinds of symmetric swimming strokes that would propel him in water. It faced on Washington Street near the edge of Scollay Square, that opening in the cow-path streets where stood the Old Howard, a burlesque theater famous for supplementing the curricula of Harvard students. I watched as the corn syrup engulfed tiny figurines, Sharp says. With the advent of hindsight, we now know that a lot of early industrial waste management plans were far more harmful and destructive than people realized at the time. Molasses is a non-Newtonian fluid, which means that its viscosity depends on the forces applied to it, as measured by shear rate. It created a feast for bacteria. Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. As a boy, I never questioned that odor, so strong on hot days, so far-reaching when the wind came out of the east. It left the ruptured tank in a choking brown wave, 15 feet high, wiping out everything that stood in its way. Grapes, sugar beets, sorghum or other plants can also be used to make a molasses-like substance. Corrections? The density of molasses is about 1.4 metric tons per cubic meter (12 pounds per US gallon), 40 percent more dense than water, resulting in the molasses having a great deal of potential energy. The enormous wave of molasses left 21 people dead, 150 injured and homes and businesses were crushed. One of my first questions was, is that number plausible? she said. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. You could smell Cornhill before you reached it because at its upper end was the Phoenix, a coffee-house marked by the aroma of freshly ground beans. That gave it a high transition temperature, making the metal brittle when it cooled below 59F. It was built to hold molasses, that old Colonial commodity that stirs school-day memories of the "triangle trade": slaves from Africa to the West Indies; molasses from the West Indies to New England; rum, made from the molasses, back across the Atlantic for a cargo of slaves. Temporarily stunned, McManus turned back to the call box. But years later, when I was on the staff of the Boston Globe, I asked a colleague about it. Within seconds, two city blocks were flooded. And then a wet, brown hell broke loose, flooding downtown Boston. Another issue was that the steel lacked manganese and was made more brittle as a result. In 1919, Boston's Purity tank could hold about two and a half million gallons of the stuff. Molasses, which is 1.5 times denser than water, is notoriously slow to pour. Along with the coffee smell was another, equally pervading. I describe such adaptations in more detail in a feature article in the August issue of Scientific Americanthe culmination of my slip-n-slide journey into the wonderfully weird world of microbes in molasses. To me, the two go together. She became interested in the molasses flood after helping teach a class at Harvard University, in which a group of undergraduate students created a scaled model of the event. [5][6] The wave was of sufficient force to drive steel panels of the burst tank against the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure[11] and tip a streetcar momentarily off the El's tracks. Once the floodgates opened, the principles of fluid dynamics compounded the problem, says Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer in Denver, and author of FYFD, a fluid-dynamics website. Damage from the Great Boston Molasses Flood in 1919. As Stephen Puleo, author of the book Dark Tide, says . There were also obvious cracks. Sharp said the flood could be broken down into two stages, with the first called The Tsunami., Molasses is 1.5 times heavier than water. Copp's Hill is right there in the North End, Boston's Little Italy. With this in mind, the company alleged that the tank had been intentionally blown up by evilly disposed persons.. Im originally from Arkansas, where we have an old expression: Slow as molasses in January, Nicole Sharp, aerospace engineerand science communicator who led the group, tellsWilliam Kole at the Associated Press. One morning, not long before I started looking into the story of the flood, I was drinking my early coffee, hot and delicious, with just that faint touch of molasses to give it special meaning. Advertising Notice Sleds shiny with varnish. In the end, the sticky tsunami killed 21 people and severely injured 150. A tablespoon of molasses provides 15 grams of carbohydrates from sugar. At that point, the tank held enough molasses to fill 3.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Knowledge awaits. It made a difference in how difficult it would be to rescue people and how difficult it would be to survive until you were rescued, said Sharp. Lemon Demon - Spirit Phone - Commentary Track by Neil Cicierega, Youtube, 26:19, Mishamallow, (April 28, 2020), Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, "The Boston Molasses Disaster: Causes of the Molasses Tank Explosion", "Great Molasses Flood: US marks 100 years since deadly wave of treacle trashed part of Boston", "Why the Great Molasses Flood Was So Deadly", "Without Warning, Molasses in January Surged Over Boston", "100 Years Later: Lessons From Boston's Molasses Flood Of 1919", "The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 killed 21 after 2 million gallon tank erupted", "The Science of the Great Molasses Flood", "Anarchists, Horses, Heroes: 12 Things You Didn't Know about the Great Boston Molasses Flood", "12 Killed When Tank of Molasses Explodes", "The Great Boston Molasses Flood: why the strange disaster matters today", "The Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919", "The Molasses Disaster of January 15, 1919", "Was Boston once literally flooded with molasses? Stephen Puleo describes how nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. The other half died from injuries and infections in the following weeks. Where the great doomed tank once stood, there is a park filled with swings, slides and the shouts of children, and next to it, an enclosed recreation center. The property formerly occupied by the molasses tank and the North End Paving Company became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority). Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. Their 2004 study is candidly titled "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?" Great Molasses Flood, disaster in Boston that occurred after a storage tank collapsed on January 15, 1919, sending more than two million gallons (eight million litres) of molasses flowing through the city's North End. Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 tells Schworm that the tank was a problem from the beginning and was never properly inspected. Some blamed anarchists for setting off a bomb. The remains of one victim, a wagon driver named Cesare Nicolo, were not fished out of nearby Boston Harbor until almost four months after the flood. January 15, 1919. Instead of the thunder of today's diesels, there was the unmuffled blat of loaded lorries with solid rubber tires, the endless clop of work horses pulling freight wagons and, over all, the roar of the relatively new elevated railwaythe "El"that for years kept Commercial Street in shadow. The molasses wave was 160 feet wide and 15 . But the Phoenix coffeehouse did not prove as permanent as the morning ritual it inspired. Several authors say that the Purity Distilling Company was trying to out-race prohibition,[23][24][25] as the 18th amendment was ratified the next day (January 16, 1919) and took effect one year later. Miriam Wasser Senior Reporter, Climate and EnvironmentMiriam Wasser is a reporter with WBUR's climate and environment team. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? January 14, 2019 On the night of Jan. 15, 1919, over 2 million gallons of molasses that had burst free earlier that afternoon from a massive storage tank in Boston's North End thickened as. It was one of the first class-action suits in Massachusetts and is considered a milestone in paving the way for modern corporate regulation. The tank had been filled to capacity only eight times since it was built a few years previously, putting the walls under an intermittent, cyclical load. And certainly the flu epidemic would have been on the tongues of these workers. Police and firefighters arrived at the disaster scene within minutes, as did over a hundred sailors from the Navy ship USS Nantucket. The Boston Globe would later write that the force of the molasses wave caused buildings to cringe up as though they were made of pasteboard. The Engine 31 firehouse was knocked clean off its foundation, causing its second story to collapse into its first. In addition, the disaster resulted in stricter construction codes being adopted by states across the country. [35] The plaque, titled "Boston Molasses Flood", reads: On January 15, 1919, a molasses tank at 529 Commercial Street exploded under pressure, killing 21 people. Martin Clougherty, having just woken up, watched his home crumble around him before being thrown into the current. Incredible physics behind the deadly 1919 Boston Molasses Flood This meant that the roughly 2.3m US gallons of molasses (8.7m litres) became more difficult to escape from as the evening drew in. The Reynolds number for an adult man in water is around one million; the Reynolds number for the same man in molasses is about 130. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Protein [8] Possibly due to the thermal expansion of the older, colder molasses already inside the tank, the tank burst open and collapsed at approximately 12:30p.m. USIA would later pay the flood victims and their family members $628,000 in damagesthe equivalent of around $8 million today. Even then, the sweet scent of molasses still hung over the North End for several weeks, and the waters of Boston Harbor remained stained brown until the summer. The fact that the molasses is extremely viscous doesn't matter for the first 60-90 seconds. After the initial wave, the molasses became viscous, exacerbated by the cold temperatures, trapping those caught in the wave and making it even more difficult to rescue them. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The days mild conditions probably aided the spread of molasses, which flowed outward for about two blocks. The molasses would also have changed the viscosity of the water, making it thicker and harder for animals to swim. Consider non-Newtonian fluids such as toothpaste, ketchup and whipped cream. While speculating about other potential environmental impacts, Bowen wonders how the molasses affected certain plants and animals. Even though firemen constantly sprayed water upon the twisted wreckage, it wasn't until the city ordered powerful streams from the city fireboat that the molasses began to disappear. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 unleashed 2.3 million gallons of molasses, most of which ended up in Boston Harbor, says Stephen Puleo, author of "Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919." Mayville analyzed the flood using todays engineering tools and suspects the tank might have been designed for water instead of molasses. He told NBC News that the manager of the project, Arthur Jell, USIAs treasurer, had no technical experience, no architectural experience, no engineering experience.. Before residents had time to register what was happening, the recently refilled molasses tank ripped wide open and unleashed 2.3 million gallons of dark-brown sludge. Sodium : 7.4mg Carbohydrates : 15g Fiber : 0g Sugars : 15g Protein : 0g Carbs Molasses is almost exclusively made up of carbohydrates in the form of sugar. Boys were under constant surveillance by supercilious clerks. Some firemen tried to blast the molasses off the street with municipal water while others tried to sop up the mess with sand. Sharp explains toCarol Off for CBC radio: It seems like that would be the point where its not as dangerous any more. Flawed rivet design was another problem, according to Mayvilles analysis, and stresses were too high on the rivet holes, where cracks first formed. The thing we do special stories on every ten years. A small plaque at the entrance to Puopolo Park, placed by the Bostonian Society, commemorates the disaster. [43], The song "Sweet Bod" from the album Spirit Phone (2016) by Lemon Demon was described on the album's commentary track to have originally combined the legend of the mellified man with the true events of the molasses flood, but the lyrics were rewritten so as not to be insensitive to the victims of the disaster. It caught young children on their way home from the morning session of school. The flood has more recently been known as the "Boston Molassacre". At the time of the flood, most people considered the ocean an infinite trash can, able to wash away any manner of pollution. Rescue workers, cleanup crews, and sight-seers had tracked molasses through the streets and spread it to subway platforms, to the seats inside trains and streetcars, to pay telephone handsets, into homes,[6][7]:139 and to countless other places. Molasses can be fermented to produce ethanol, the active ingredient in alcoholic beverages and a key component in munitions. Neither method worked well, particularly as the hours passed and the molasses congealed. Its brittleness might have been a final straw. The old triangle had long been broken by 1919, but New England still made (and makes) rum, as well as baked beans, and the molasses for both still came (and comes) north from the Caribbean and New . The tank still stands.. They released a vat of corn syrup into a tiny cardboard Boston and used high-speed cameras to film what happened. Its an ethical issue, rather than understanding the science.. As the city was planning its heroes welcome for sons returning from World War I, a frightful flood devastated a vast area of the North End. The molasses tank stood 50 feet (15 meters) tall and 90ft (27m) in diameter, and contained as much as 2.3millionUSgal (8,700m3). [27] A 2014 investigation applied modern engineering analysis and found that the steel was half as thick as it should have been for a tank of its size even with the lower standards they had at the time. Molasses: Types, nutrition, and benefits - Medical News Today Slow as molasses isnt just a sayingthe byproduct of sugar production is usually sticky and viscous, even at room temperature. My target was always Iver Johnson's, the famous old sporting-goods store that captured the hearts of Boston lads in those days. Natural Disasters & Environment The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Sugary-sweet molasses turned deadly on January 15, 1919, when a holding tank burst and sent. Even though the guar gum doubled the viscosity of water, the volunteers swam equally fast in both pools. Gettelfinger and Cussler calculated that in order to challenge human swimmers, they would have needed to increase the viscosity of water 1,000 times. Summary Molasses is a byproduct of making sugar. The molasses wave, after spreading out, covered several blocks of downtown Boston to a depth of two or three feet. [6], First to the scene were 116 cadets under the direction of Lieutenant Commander H. J. Copeland from USSNantucket, a training ship of the Massachusetts Nautical School (now the Massachusetts Maritime Academy) that was docked nearby at the playground pier. Sweet but deadly 1919 disaster explained", "Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly 'Tsunami of Molasses' of 1919", "Abstract: L27.00008: In a sea of sticky molasses: The physics of the Boston Molasses Flood", "Boston officials remember the Great Molasses Flood, 100 years later", "Gathering around the site of the molasses tank to remember its victims", "Old Army trucks find a home and triage", "The Great Molasses Disaster The Darkest of The Hillside Thickets", "I Survived The Great Molasses Flood, 1919", "The Boston Molasses Flood in Pop Culture", "Scenes in the Molasses-Flooded Streets of Boston", 100 years ago, Bostons North End was hit by a deadly wave of molasses, The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 was Bostons strangest disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Molasses_Flood&oldid=1157064846, Environmental disasters in the United States, Industrial accidents and incidents in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, Residential area (site of flattened Clougherty house), This page was last edited on 26 May 2023, at 01:54. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Molasses-Flood, History Today - A Sticky Tragedy: The Boston Molasses Disaster, LiveScience - Great Molasses Flood of 1919: Why This Deluge of Goo Was So Deadly. Nowpeople who have been knocked down by that initial wave who may have been pinned in wreckage are trapped in places where they have to try to keep this molasses away from their mouth and nose so they can breathe while people are trying to come and get them. The killer flood made of molasses - BBC Future Fitzgerald himself had been born in the North End back when it was Irish and not yet Italian. At the foot of the hill, at Salem Street, is the Old North Church where two lanterns were hung as a signal to Paul Revere, and in a little park next to the church is a statue of Revere himself. The wreckage of the collapsed tank is visible in background, center, next to the light-colored warehouse. Its sugary-sweet contents were the property of United States Industrial Alcohol, which took regular shipments of molasses from the Caribbean and used them to produce alcohol for liquor and munitions manufacturing. If the molasses blocked sunlight for too long, the eelgrass wouldnt be able photosynthesize and could eventually die. The company had built the tank in 1915 when World War I had increased demand for industrial alcohol, but the construction process had been rushed and haphazard. The Reynolds number simply did not sink low enough. It was sacrificed to the great rebuilding of the inner city which took place mostly in the 1960s, and, unlike its namesake, it has not risen again. Horses werent able to run away from it. Omissions? A 40-foot wave of molasses buckled the elevated railroad tracks, crushed buildings and inundated the neighborhood. Ultimately, U.S. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, was found liable, even as many questions remained about what had actually happened. In 1919 a wave of syrup swept through the streets of Boston. The lawsuits against USIA were eventually combined into a mammoth legal proceeding that dragged on for five years. The wave was 2.3 million gallons, moving at 35 miles per hour, 25 feet high and 160 feet wide at its outset, rushing through the city's crowded and densely populated North End. My boyhood association of the sweet aroma, mingled with the fragrance of coffee from the Phoenix, led me into a habit I still enjoy, though most other people seem to shun it: I invariably sweeten my first cup of early morning coffee with a teaspoonful of dark molasses. [13] The cadets ran several blocks toward the accident and entered into the knee-deep flood of molasses to pull out the survivors, while others worked to keep curious onlookers from getting in the way of the rescuers. The concrete slab base for the tank remains in place approximately 20 inches (51cm) below the surface of the baseball diamond at Langone Park. Cookie Settings, The Real History Behind the Archimedes Dial in 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny', See Inside One of Americas Last Pencil Factories, Why Fireworks Scare Some Dogs but Not Others, Why We Set Off Fireworks on the Fourth of July, An Archaeologist's Take on What Indiana Jones Gets Rightand WrongAbout the Field. By sunset, 21 people were dead, 150 were injured and the North End looked like it had been bombed. Men paused to eat and chat in a shack owned by the Paving Department, whcih shared the open area where the tank stood. Cookie Policy It made me want to look into the physics of the accident.. The accident has since become a staple of local culture, not only for the damage the flood brought, but also for the sweet smell that filled the North End for decades after the disaster. If it had burst during the summer, the researchers say, the molasses would have likely flowed farther and been much thinner. Haven't you worked on one yet?". All Rights Reserved. A group of students at Harvard investigated the eventand presented their conclusions at recent meeting of the American Physical Society. The reason for the lawsuits was disagreement as to the nature of the disaster. In a second they were gooey and bedraggled, plunging through the flood that sucked at their puttees. The bacteria would start taking up the sugar, and all of the oxygen would go away. And I searched the research literature for the most recent studies on how microorganisms swim. What in the world had caused it? He says the most officials could do was remove the dead fish while they waited for the tides to disperse the molasses. More recent investigations suggest several fundamental problems with the structure of the tank. Although rescue equipment was quick to arrive on the scene, vehicles and rescue workers on foot could barely get through the clinging muck that filled the streets. And why would they? Horses and people and everything were all caught up in it.. As molasses flooded the streets, it slowed but became thicker and stickier, and still difficult to escape. Then theres a regime where inertia plays a major role, he said. It was an unseasonably warm day, and witnesses in the area recalled hearing shots like gunfire just after noon. And instead of inspecting the tank and filling it with water first to test it for flaws, USIA ignored all warning signs, including groaning noises every time it was filled. Ronald Mayville, a senior principal at the engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger in Massachusetts, has studied the molasses flood in his spare time. Men up to their ankles in the makings of rum listened for a moment and went back to work. As the 15-foot (5-metre) wave swept through at around 35mph (56km/h), buildings were wrecked, wagons toppled, 21 people were left dead and about 150 were injured. Warmer weather the previous day would have assisted in building this pressure, as the air temperature rose from 2 to 41F (17 to 5.0C) over that period. In this stage, the volume of fluid released is the most important factor determining how rapidly the front of the wave sweeps forward. 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 ninedegrees Fahrenheitwarmer than the chilly Boston air. The storage tank had been filled to near capacity on July 13 and the molasses had likely fermented, producing carbon dioxide that raised the pressure inside the cylinder. The Clougherty home at the foot of Copp's Hill collapsed around poor Bridget Clougherty, killing her instantly. Molasses History Microbes permanently inhabit a low Reynolds number worlda truth made famous by the American physicist Edward Mills Purcell in his 1973 lecture "Life at Low Reynolds Number. Some bacteria must combat Reynolds numbers as low as 10^-5 (0.00001). The Sticky Science Behind the Deadly Boston Molasses Disaster Depending on the way it is made, molasses is between 5,000 to 10,000 times more viscous than water. It was reported that "Everything that a Bostonian touched was sticky."[6]. Dr. Nicole Sharp, a science communicator and an expert in fluid dynamics, said that when she heard the 35-mph number, she was surprised. The actual impact would depend on how much of the molasses persisted in the water until the water warmed back up, and how much of it just got diluted and washed out to sea, she says. Great Molasses Flood, disaster in Boston that occurred after a storage tank collapsed on January 15, 1919, sending more than two million gallons (eight million litres) of molasses flowing through the citys North End. The trouble was that all the rescue workers, clean-up crews and sight-seers, squelching through the molasses, managed to distribute it all over Greater Boston. Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. All that thick syrup. They probably mentioned politics, for President Wilson was in Europe trying to get a peace treaty based on his Fourteen Points. Nevertheless, it continued to be used, and after the wars conclusion USIA focused on producing grain alcohol, which was in high demand as prohibition neared passage. I couldn't even find a plaque, not the merest marker to remember the 15th of January, 1919. Sharp, and a team of scientists at Harvard University, performed experiments in a large refrigerator to model how corn syrup (standing in for molasses) behaves as temperature varies, confirming contemporary accounts of the disaster. The human toll would eventually climb to 21 dead and another 150 injured, but many of the deceased remained missing for several days. At the same time the molasses is getting harder and harder to move through, its getting harder and harder for people who are in the wreckage to keep their heads clear so they can keep breathing.. Constitution"Old Ironsides"moored at the Boston Naval Shipyard over at Charlestown. Without Warning, Molasses Surged Over Boston 100 Years Ago