The Great Molasses Flood of 1919

[00:00:00] Molasses. Waste deep, covered the street and swirled and bobbed about the wreckage.

[00:00:07] Here and there struggled a form, whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell.

[00:00:14] Only an upheaval, a thrashing about, in the sticky mass showed where any life was.

[00:00:20] Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly paper.

[00:00:24] The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared.

[00:00:28] Human beings, men and women suffered likewise.

[00:00:34] This was from an article covering an event known as the Great Molasses Flood,

[00:00:39] also known as the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 or the 1919 Molasses Incident.

[00:00:47] And that time Boston shat itself and killed 21 people.

[00:00:51] Today on Historical Quarrels we'll be going over not only the event,

[00:00:54] but what may have caused this eruption of sticky goo that would end up painting Boston's backside like it was a Jackson Pollock painting.

[00:01:02] And some of the bullshit corporate, you can't sue me Tom Bollery that would occur shortly after this event.

[00:01:09] So sit back, relax and get ready cause this shit's about to get approximately 1200 metric tons heavy on today's Historical Quarrel.

[00:01:27] Hey y'all, it's ya boy, skinny peen McGee.

[00:01:32] AKA Tyler, AKA the ginger ninja, AKA daddy's creamiest boy.

[00:01:41] And I am so excited to be back in the motherfucking saddle again.

[00:01:46] For those of you new here, I want to say welcome and for the returning viewers your creamy boy has missed you lots.

[00:01:54] Now typically in this show I have a bit of a drawn out intro but no more.

[00:01:58] After today's episode there will be no more intros really like this.

[00:02:02] I'm officially moving towards a video essay format.

[00:02:05] So for those of you here on YouTube, you can skip to the main chunk of what you came here for by tamping this time step.

[00:02:12] For my old and possible new listeners that didn't skip this, you're cool.

[00:02:16] That's all.

[00:02:17] I just thought you should know how fucking cool you are right before the video starts because we all need words of information sometimes.

[00:02:22] And that's what you get by not skipping this and by not being an impatient asshole.

[00:02:27] So congrats.

[00:02:31] Congratulations.

[00:02:33] Congratulations.

[00:02:39] On Wednesday, January 15th, 1919 in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts,

[00:02:43] a large storage tank owned by the USIA filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses,

[00:02:47] rubs pushing out a wave of molasses traveling over 35 miles per hour, destroying buildings and killing 21 people.

[00:02:52] In the aftermath, the USIA would try to claim that they weren't at fault by blaming anarchists

[00:02:56] but would eventually be forced to pay the damages and resulting class action lawsuit.

[00:02:59] This event would cause Boston to reportedly smell like molasses for the next 10 years.

[00:03:04] Wooo baby! That's what I've been waiting for! That's what it's all about!

[00:03:07] Um, yeah, that's pretty much the gist of the Great Molasses flood of 1919.

[00:03:13] I just saved everyone that watched this video with a 30 second Google and Wikipedia read in the words of everyone's favorite Australian anti-hero.

[00:03:21] You're all fucking welcome.

[00:03:22] Fuck, I thought I put in a clip of Banda too well.

[00:03:25] So you might be asking yourself,

[00:03:28] why is there still time left on this video if you explained everything already?

[00:03:31] Well, my sweet, sweet listener who definitely probably wasn't dropped on their head as a baby like I was,

[00:03:36] I have a neurological disorder that makes me hyperfixate on things and when I hyperfixate, I learn things.

[00:03:49] And I have a terrible need to overshare with everyone on the internet so y'all will learn everything that I've learned about this.

[00:03:55] Like, did you know that the original idea for the film 127 hours was originally supposed to be about the Great Molasses flood with James Franco pen to play Pasquale Lantosca?

[00:04:08] The 10 year old boy who sadly died during the flood.

[00:04:11] Only in the movie the 10 year old would be 18 and would ultimately survive.

[00:04:15] However, James Franco was reportedly against being covered in hot thick goo all day on set unless it was Seth Rogen's white scrote rope.

[00:04:23] So the script writers ultimately decided to find another trap to live story.

[00:04:28] They could bring to life and came up with the rock climbing horror survival story that was 127 hours.

[00:04:35] So with all that being said, let's take a brief look at the setting of today's story 1919 Boston, Massachusetts and really 1919 America as a whole.

[00:04:45] So we can understand the background just a bit clearer.

[00:04:51] Let's start today's tale by going back in time a bit to December 18, 1917 about a year and some change before today's bait event takes place.

[00:05:01] On December 18, 1917, after Wayne Wheeler and ASL, aka the Anti Saloon League had successfully bullied and blackmailed.

[00:05:14] Seriously, he blackmailed people look it up.

[00:05:16] Enough of Congress, the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution would be proposed and women everywhere in America no longer had to fear a drunken fist from their husbands every night.

[00:05:27] And instead had to fear a sober fist beating them every night.

[00:05:32] Yeah, a bit better.

[00:05:34] And anyone who says Wayne Wheeler is an upstanding gentleman who just wanted to help people.

[00:05:38] Well, to quote the one true God and my personal Lord and Savior, Danny DeVito.

[00:05:42] You have to be a real low life piece of shit to get involved in politics.

[00:05:49] This proposal had an almost immediate impact on every company that had their greedy little fingers in the jar of sweet, sweet alcohol sales, especially any of the over 1300 breweries and distilleries the US had at the time.

[00:06:02] Now the 18th Amendment's language was that the production, transport and sale of intoxicating liquors were would be illegal.

[00:06:12] Although it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol.

[00:06:16] So many of the breweries and distilleries went into rapid production of alcohol to try and make as much of a profit as they could before the prohibition got ratified into the Constitution.

[00:06:25] And this is exactly what USIA would do through one of their subsidiaries, Purity Distilling Company.

[00:06:34] That was located in Boston, Massachusetts.

[00:06:37] And between December 18th and January 15th, USIA would ramp up its production to quote outpace the prohibition being more concerned with profits instead of safety.

[00:06:48] This would lead them to needing to store a quote metric fuck ton of molasses.

[00:06:55] And for those who are unfamiliar with the 100% really real unit of measurement, a metric fuck ton is approximately 13,000 short tons, which is around 12,000 metric tons.

[00:07:10] And for those of you unaware molasses can be distilled into ethanol and is typically used to make sweet, sweet delicious rum.

[00:07:17] So the USIA had the Purity Distilling Company working overtime, which meant they had to move and use product as quickly as possible, leaving little room to be concerned about things such as safety and proper protocols.

[00:07:32] And this would lead them to using a storage tank that was originally built to aid in the war efforts for the Great War, World War One.

[00:07:38] Now this storage tank in question wasn't great. It wasn't even good.

[00:07:42] Later findings would go on to show that the tank was designed to store water, not molasses, which is about 1.5 times heavier than water.

[00:07:52] On top of that, it was about half as thick as it should have been as well to quote an article.

[00:07:58] A US industrial alcohol subsidiary Purity Distilling Co. built the tank in 1915 to keep up with increasing demand for military weapons.

[00:08:05] The tank stored molasses from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies, which was then brought to a decilery in East Cambridge and turned into industrial alcohol.

[00:08:15] Companies in the US, England and France bought the alcohol, which they desperately needed to make dynamite, smokeless powder and other explosives used in World War One.

[00:08:26] So you know, war money. That's what everyone did back then.

[00:08:29] Worst part is, to test this tank for leaks they didn't even fill it completely with water, which would have immediately revealed all the fucking cracks it had.

[00:08:37] Instead they filled it up to about six inches full and then called that good.

[00:08:42] And yeah, yeah, that's fine. Then once it started getting filled with molasses it would leak so much that the residents in the area would collect it regularly to bring home.

[00:08:50] And what did USIA slash Purity Distilling do to fix this?

[00:08:55] They painted the tank fucking brown to match the color of the molasses that was leaking out.

[00:09:02] It's the equivalent of a fucking child pushing all his clothes under, clothes and toys under his bed and just being like, hey, you know, you can't see it.

[00:09:12] We're good, right? The best isn't there.

[00:09:14] And then meanwhile there's still fucking garbage and like mice trying to skitter about.

[00:09:18] Oh, holy shit.

[00:09:21] Anyways, that's the context and background you need for this story.

[00:09:24] So let's go ahead and move into.

[00:09:31] So a few days before January 15th, 1919, Purity Distillation under the guidance of the project director Arthur Gill, who was a treasurer for the USIA and had no engineering experience whatsoever.

[00:09:42] It's important to know for later.

[00:09:44] Decided it would be a great idea to fill up the storage tank in northern Boston to the fucking brim, one that already had cold, nearly frozen molasses sitting inside it.

[00:09:56] So they go in, dump 500,000 gallons of warm molasses into a container that workers and citizens have already been warning them as leaking and seems to be having issues.

[00:10:08] But you know, product has to move and mice gotta be made and shit.

[00:10:12] You can't be so concerned about things. Stop being a little bitch.

[00:10:17] Well, pretty much as soon as it was dumped in around 7am in the morning, wearing in gas sounds could be heard as the 500,000 gallons of warm molasses began to mix with the cold, nearly frozen molasses inside.

[00:10:28] Which brings me to a brief segment that I would like to share with you all called Science Bitch.

[00:10:34] You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.

[00:10:36] Bill Knight, the Science Guy here.

[00:10:38] So let's first talk about something called thermal expansion and contraction.

[00:10:43] When molasses is heated, it expands and becomes less viscous or thinner, making it flow more easily.

[00:10:49] Now when cold or frozen molasses becomes thicker, much less viscous and flow slowly.

[00:10:53] When the two temperatures mix, there will be a thermal gradient within the container.

[00:10:58] The colder molasses will contract while the hotter molasses will try to expand.

[00:11:02] This causes stresses on the container walls due to uneven distribution of temperature and pressure.

[00:11:10] And so, the mixing of two fluids with different temperatures would create convective currents within the container.

[00:11:18] Hotter molasses will try to rise while the colder molasses sinks, forming turbulent flows.

[00:11:24] The rate of mixing will depend on the viscosity of the molasses at different temperatures.

[00:11:29] Since molasses is highly viscous, this mixing will be slow and uneven.

[00:11:34] Just imagine what you feel your inside's doing when you eat a bunch of Taco Bell at 2 in the morning

[00:11:39] because you got shit-faced and your Uber was cool enough to stop by somewhere to let you grab food.

[00:11:44] But the closest thing near you that was open still was just Taco Bell.

[00:11:48] So you accept your fate and eat it and then almost immediately regret it 30 minutes later.

[00:11:53] Same shit's going on here.

[00:11:55] An uneven mixing can lead to pockets of stress where hot and cold molasses do not mix smoothly,

[00:12:01] potentially causing internal pressure variations.

[00:12:04] If the container is poorly designed for this kind of temperature differential,

[00:12:08] the weaker areas of the structure may begin to fail under the combined stress of thermal expansion,

[00:12:13] internal pressure, and convection currents.

[00:12:16] And this creates a ton of pressure, the 500,000 gallons of hot molasses,

[00:12:21] approximately 30 to 45 psi, which is insane.

[00:12:27] So, quick math.

[00:12:30] The tank contained approximately 2.3 million gallons of molasses,

[00:12:33] which is equivalent to about 8,700 cubic meters or m cubed.

[00:12:39] Researchers estimated that the pressure inside the tank

[00:12:42] by considering the thermal expansion molasses and the possibility of gas buildup

[00:12:47] and when the molasses expanded, the volumetric expansion of a liquid

[00:12:51] can be approximated by using its thermal expansion coefficient.

[00:12:55] For example, the molasses expanded by 0.48 m cubed due to heating.

[00:13:00] This would affect the internal pressure.

[00:13:03] Now here's a quick little math formula for you nerds out there if you want to see it

[00:13:07] and you can plug it in.

[00:13:08] This is what historical researchers would do to try and figure out, you know,

[00:13:10] if this event really just occurred naturally because of some fuck up people did

[00:13:16] and they found out that yes, yes it did.

[00:13:20] Some researchers estimated the pressure inside the tank could have reached as high

[00:13:25] as 2 to 3 atmospheres, again 30 to 45 psi.

[00:13:29] The molasses wave was described as being 25 feet high and moving at 35 miles per hour.

[00:13:35] The flow rate and the velocity of the molasses were calculated

[00:13:37] to understand the impact on the surrounding structure.

[00:13:40] The force of the molasses impact on structures was estimated to be

[00:13:44] based on the mass of molasses and the speed at which it moved.

[00:13:47] And yeah, that's basically the basics of what you'd need to know

[00:13:49] to figure out how fucking crazy this shit was

[00:13:51] and this had all started when they dumped the load into the tank in January 14th.

[00:13:57] The day January 15th 1919 was an unusually warm day for Boston

[00:14:01] with temperatures rising above 40 degrees Celsius.

[00:14:05] Usually January and Boston is so cold you can walk outside

[00:14:08] and use your nips as tiny daggers to defend yourself from

[00:14:11] the surprising amount of violent assholes that live there.

[00:14:13] Sorry if you're from Boston and watching this,

[00:14:16] but you know what your fucking city is.

[00:14:20] But not on that day.

[00:14:22] So with rapid temperature change externally,

[00:14:25] externally combined with the rapid change internally,

[00:14:27] this tank would finally give up and explode.

[00:14:41] The wave being 25 feet high and traveling at 35 miles per hour

[00:14:44] was of sufficient force to drive steel panels

[00:14:48] of the first tank against the rider.

[00:14:51] Right girders of the adjacent Boston elevated railways Atlantic

[00:14:56] Avenue structure and tip a streetcar momentarily off the L's tracks.

[00:15:01] Steven Puea, a Puleo Leo describes how nearby buildings were

[00:15:09] swept off their foundations and crushed several blocks were

[00:15:13] flooded to a depth of two to three feet.

[00:15:16] Leo quotes Boston Post report.

[00:15:20] Well, ass this waste deep covered the street and swirled and

[00:15:23] bubbled about the wreckage here in their struggled form.

[00:15:26] Like we said it stated at the beginning sounds intense, right?

[00:15:30] Well equally devastating as the explosion would be the

[00:15:32] aftermath because mother nature is a bitch.

[00:15:35] And by the evening of January 15th,

[00:15:37] the temperatures had dropped to below freezing once again,

[00:15:40] making this shit sandwich a frozen shit sandwich.

[00:15:45] Which isn't the most creative way of explaining this,

[00:15:47] but that's besides the point.

[00:15:49] I'm getting ahead of myself.

[00:15:51] Immediately following the explosion,

[00:15:52] many of the residents living in North End would end up

[00:15:54] evacuating or staying behind to try and find loved ones

[00:15:58] that may have been caught up in the explosion.

[00:16:00] First to the scene in the aftermath were 116 cadets

[00:16:03] from the Massachusetts Marine Time Academy.

[00:16:06] Many of them would run in knee deep molasses to try

[00:16:09] and find survivors.

[00:16:11] The Boston Police Red Cross Army and Navy

[00:16:15] personnel soon arrived as well.

[00:16:17] Some nurses from the Red Cross would dive into the molasses,

[00:16:21] those brave sons of bitches, while others tended to

[00:16:23] the injured keeping them warm and feeding anyone that was exhausted.

[00:16:28] Many of these people worked through the night

[00:16:30] and the injured were so numerous that the doctors

[00:16:33] and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital

[00:16:35] in a nearby building.

[00:16:38] As you can imagine molasses is sticky as shit.

[00:16:41] So walking through it took up a lot of energy

[00:16:44] and so many that were caught in the wave

[00:16:47] would remain there for days

[00:16:49] as it took a risk risk tremendous effort

[00:16:52] to wade into the pool of molasses.

[00:16:56] In total, 150 people were injured

[00:17:00] and 21 people would die due to the explosion

[00:17:03] and two of them were children aged 10 years old

[00:17:06] who were just outside playing when the explosion happened.

[00:17:11] So a cleanup effort would commence,

[00:17:13] one that would last for two weeks

[00:17:16] with 300 people helping out,

[00:17:19] equating to a total of 87,000 man hours.

[00:17:23] In the meantime, many of the residents

[00:17:25] slash victims of North End tried to figure out

[00:17:28] how the fuck this happened,

[00:17:29] especially since many of them had told workers

[00:17:31] about the faulty tank

[00:17:32] and they in turn had told the project supervisor,

[00:17:35] Arthur Jell about it as well.

[00:17:37] And so many of the victims wanted justice

[00:17:41] and that's when a slew of class action lawsuits would begin.

[00:17:45] The first ever of their kind aimed at taking down the USIA.

[00:17:50] But this is America and in America

[00:17:52] we are all about letting rich assholes have an advantage

[00:17:56] and so USIA would take the lawsuits to court

[00:17:59] denying any responsibility stating that the tank was in fact safe

[00:18:03] but it had been sabotaged by quote,

[00:18:07] evil doers and sabotage, just general sabotage.

[00:18:13] And the USIA would go on to spend more than $50,000

[00:18:17] at expert witness fees to claim

[00:18:18] it was clearly done by a group of communists or anarchists.

[00:18:22] And this was during America's first red scare.

[00:18:25] So there was a very good chance

[00:18:27] that they could have won here

[00:18:29] but thankfully they didn't.

[00:18:31] Quoting from a Chambers associate article,

[00:18:35] eventually the court found that the tank had

[00:18:38] lost simply because the factor of safety was too low.

[00:18:43] Insufficient maintenance had been carried out on a storage unit

[00:18:46] that was poorly put together in the first place.

[00:18:49] This chimed with the accounts of locals who said

[00:18:51] that although the tank was barely up four years

[00:18:55] old it leaked molasses so badly

[00:18:57] you could collect syrup in a cup.

[00:18:59] Put simply the company was to blame for all the carnage.

[00:19:02] Settlements for more than 100 claims were made out of court

[00:19:06] and the United States industrial alcohol company

[00:19:08] ultimately paid out more than $600,000

[00:19:10] in out-of-court settlements, about $10 million

[00:19:13] as of 2013, just about more even now.

[00:19:18] The survivors of those killed were reportedly

[00:19:21] given $7,000 per victim, around like 150K today.

[00:19:26] So there you go, a happy ending for everyone involved.

[00:19:30] Kind of.

[00:19:31] I'm certain the families of those that died would much rather

[00:19:34] have their loved ones back than a lump sum of money.

[00:19:38] However, those who did die in this colossal failure

[00:19:41] did not do so in vain.

[00:19:42] Because of the lawsuits levied against USIA

[00:19:45] it's that a legal president to hold companies responsible

[00:19:47] for negligence and started a whole line of safety regulations

[00:19:50] that are now in place today to ensure a disaster like

[00:19:54] the Great Molasses Flood never happens again.

[00:19:58] Well, I hope you enjoyed that video and if you did

[00:20:01] please consider subscribing, hitting that like button

[00:20:04] and leaving a comment below to show your support to this channel.

[00:20:08] I hope to continue to make more content like this one

[00:20:10] as I feel like this style suits my personality much better

[00:20:14] and allows me to get a bit more loosey-goosey with everything.

[00:20:17] For those of you that have been longstanding fans of the podcast

[00:20:20] know that an audio version of these types of episodes

[00:20:22] will still be available on all your favorite podcasting platforms.

[00:20:26] It will just have some sound bites, another editing visual humor

[00:20:30] that you can only get through here like this YouTube format.

[00:20:35] So when you have a chance check out the video

[00:20:38] unless you're blind and then I know there's an option

[00:20:42] to have what's going on in the screen right out to you.

[00:20:44] So you know let's use that I guess.

[00:20:51] Yeah, I don't know why I brought up blind people.

[00:20:53] Love you guys, bye!