6 ms·

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2018)

61 points by mhb 5y ago

shermozle 5y ago
See the earlier London Beer Flood near the corner of Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood
- sasaf5 5y ago
  Or the Dublin Whiskey Fire [0], where burning whiskey formed an inches deep river and 13 people died (not burned, but of alcohol poisoning). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_whiskey_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_whiskey_fire
  - aaron695 5y ago
    You know this is a joke? Neither drinking too much or contamination from the environment could do this. The only thing possible would be if they were also producing methanol and someone accidentally got hold of a barrel during the looting stage and shared it around. [1] "I'm sorry to tell you, but your poor husband passed away at work today when he fell into the vat and drowned. "Tell me, did he suffer?" "Knowing Brian O'Malley as well as I did, I don't think so," said the foreman, "He got out three times to go to the men's room."
chrislusf 5y ago
"And in 2016, Harvard University scientists concluded the molasses disaster would have killed fewer people had it happened in the summer. They figured the winter air cooled and then thickened the goo, making it harder to rescue victims." Does it take some scientists to figure this out? If so, are there any papers to explain their findings?
Fezzik 5y ago
A few prior discussions and related articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 There were a number of other submissions over the last 12 years but no others with many comments.
- dang 5y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly ‘Tsunami of Molasses’ of 1919 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 - Nov 2016 (20 comments) Great Molasses Flood - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 - Oct 2015 (5 comments) Looks like these are the other ones with comments: The Great Molasses Flood (1919) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25911280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25911280 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) In 1919, a 40-foot molasses wave slammed into city’s North End, killing 21 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913799 - Jan 2019 (1 comment) How the Boston Molasses Disaster Ushered in the Era of Modern Regulation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863555 - Jan 2019 (2 comments)
ggm 5y ago
J.P.Martin, a children's author, wrote a book "uncle and the treacle trouble" (1967) [1] which I am personally sure was informed by this. Beautifully illustrated by Quentin Blake. (millions of dwarves clean up the treacle after a treacle-vat tower is breached by the evil nemisis of the book) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_and_the_Treacle_Trouble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_and_the_Treacle_Trouble
campground 5y ago
Analogies are always flawed, but I sometimes feel like computer engineering today is in the same place that mechanical engineering was 100 years ago, with the (fortunately less deadly) equivalent of a boiler exploding or a vat of molasses rupturing every other week. Does this mean we need more stringent regulatory and certification regimes for IT and computer security?
- bob1029 5y ago
  I would hesitate to put all of computer engineering into the same bucket. Continuing the analogy, Some mechanical engineers were better at learning from their exploded boilers than others were. A few (many?) of us in the industry have been quietly watching and learning from the explosions occurring across the street. About once a week you find some wreckage strewn across the way and you find familiar stories in the tangled mess - "Too much webscale", "didnt care about the business", "meme language crippled productivity", etc. Usually doesn't take a forensic mastermind to determine why a software product exploded - at least in strategic terms. > Does this mean we need more stringent regulatory and certification regimes for IT and computer security? No. We do not need any more arbitrary regulatory & certification processes in our lives. If you have a specific business application that requires additional scrutiny (i.e. nuclear reactor scram control system), then the appropriate domain-specific regulations & certifications should be applied. It makes absolutely no sense to impose these constraints upon the field at large.
  - corty 5y ago
    It does, however, make sense to take a lesson from medicine: Networked computers with common vulnerabilities are prone to herd infections in analogy to biological epidemics, mass hysteria, etc. So it does make sense to e.g. preventatively quarantine all unpatched windows boxes, prescribe security measures and development practices for those systems, where a network-wide spreading event may be caused.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > It makes absolutely no sense to impose these constraints upon the field at large. As soon as you deal with customer PII, it does make sense to mandate a) insurance and b) standards. Just how much PII got compromised because of failure to adhere to basic IT security standards? Target got hacked because they put IoT devices on the same network as the cash registers and CC readers. Web shops are hacked every day because of software unpatched for years. Hospitals and other critical infrastructure get hacked on a weekly basis because of even more unbelievable security issues (like, once again, running unpatched software and lacking network segmentation). And don't get me started on the utterly disgusting shit you see in smartphone BSPs. The stuff that vendors do there is just mind boggling - if I were a secret service looking for an exploit, I'd start in the horribly patched-together kernels. Or in IoT devices that are outdated the very moment they leave the factory floor. Yes, we definitely need a lot more mandatory quality control and standards.
dustintrex 5y ago
Relevant Onion: https://www.theonion.com/pudding-factory-disaster-brings-slow-creamy-death-to-t-1819565362 https://www.theonion.com/pudding-factory-disaster-brings-slo...
aaron695 5y ago
Death certificates, most are not the fun drowning in molasses, but a few are which is surprising (asphyxiation), I assume the 'drownings' without molasses mentioned are the ones pushed into the river http://digitalarchives.sec.state.ma.us/uncategorised/deliverableUnit_9444be7e-fece-4bbe-9943-3f1f96653054/?view=render http://digitalarchives.sec.state.ma.us/uncategorised/deliver...
sparky_z 5y ago
"The tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, contained 2.3 million gallons of molasses originally destined for use in a munitions plant." Why would a munitions plant need an enormous quantity of molasses? Was it used in the production of munitions?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sparky_z 5y ago
  I looked into it a bit further, and apparently it was eventually going to be piped to the Purity Ethanol Plant where it would be fermented to make ethanol. The ethanol would then be used in the production of high explosives for the war effort.
  - sa46 5y ago
    I was curious about the specific type of munition. It was for smokeless gunpowder: > unquenchable thirst for the industrial alcohol needed to produce cordite—a smokeless gunpowder used in ammunition and artillery shells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordite
  - adwn 5y ago
    Minor nitpick: They were used for low explosives (not high). See [1] for details, or [2] for a video. Surprisingly, high explosives are harder to ignite than low explosives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive#By_velocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive#By_velocity [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWcTV2nEkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWcTV2nEkU
    - sparky_z 5y ago
      The source I was using says clearly that the ethanol was to be used for producing high explosives. "...a small portion of molasses would be distilled into grain alcohol for rum, but most of it, more than 80 percent, would be distilled into industrial alcohol that would be used as a major ingredient in the production of munitions, especially dynamite, smokeless powder, and other high explosives." From https://archive.org/details/darktide00step/page/10/mode/2up?q=munitions https://archive.org/details/darktide00step/page/10/mode/2up?... Of the two specific examples listed, dynamite is unambiguously a high explosive. From what I can tell, smokeless powder is usually classified as low by default, because that's how it behaves during storage, shipping, and handling. But during actual use, it occupies a grey area between the two classifications. I've found several sources saying that it can act as a high explosive under the right circumstances.
zabzonk 5y ago
The History Guy has a good YouTube vid on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adPuti-SL5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adPuti-SL5o
fauria 5y ago
Here is a visual, physics-based simulation of the flood: https://youtu.be/KC8dnmILOBg https://youtu.be/KC8dnmILOBg I find interesting how the fact that molasses is a non-Newtonian fluid helps explaining its behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid
notwhereyouare 5y ago
Purity claimed anarchists blew up the tank, but investigators found it was poorly constructed and never tested for safety. Why am I not surprised they tried to blame somebody else but themselves
mhb 5y ago
Analysis of failure: https://csengineermag.com/the-great-boston-molasses-tank-failure-of-1919/ https://csengineermag.com/the-great-boston-molasses-tank-fai...
mauvehaus 5y ago
For a more in-depth look at the disaster and the social circumstances in the North End that led to the attempted scapegoating of Italian immigrant anarchists, I recommend Dark Tide: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/559887.Dark_Tide https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/559887.Dark_Tide
tomconnors 5y ago
The band Protest the Hero has a song about this event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNcGbAQgZIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNcGbAQgZIg
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
I learned about this while on a tour of Boston. They referred to it as the Boston Molassacre.

61 points by mhb 5y ago

See the earlier London Beer Flood near the corner of Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood

sasaf5 5y ago
Or the Dublin Whiskey Fire [0], where burning whiskey formed an inches deep river and 13 people died (not burned, but of alcohol poisoning). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_whiskey_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_whiskey_fire
- aaron695 5y ago
  You know this is a joke? Neither drinking too much or contamination from the environment could do this. The only thing possible would be if they were also producing methanol and someone accidentally got hold of a barrel during the looting stage and shared it around. [1] "I'm sorry to tell you, but your poor husband passed away at work today when he fell into the vat and drowned. "Tell me, did he suffer?" "Knowing Brian O'Malley as well as I did, I don't think so," said the foreman, "He got out three times to go to the men's room."

chrislusf 5y ago

"And in 2016, Harvard University scientists concluded the molasses disaster would have killed fewer people had it happened in the summer. They figured the winter air cooled and then thickened the goo, making it harder to rescue victims." Does it take some scientists to figure this out? If so, are there any papers to explain their findings?

Fezzik 5y ago

A few prior discussions and related articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 There were a number of other submissions over the last 12 years but no others with many comments.

dang 5y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly ‘Tsunami of Molasses’ of 1919 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13043559 - Nov 2016 (20 comments) Great Molasses Flood - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361913 - Oct 2015 (5 comments) Looks like these are the other ones with comments: The Great Molasses Flood (1919) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25911280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25911280 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) In 1919, a 40-foot molasses wave slammed into city’s North End, killing 21 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913799 - Jan 2019 (1 comment) How the Boston Molasses Disaster Ushered in the Era of Modern Regulation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863555 - Jan 2019 (2 comments)

ggm 5y ago

J.P.Martin, a children's author, wrote a book "uncle and the treacle trouble" (1967) [1] which I am personally sure was informed by this. Beautifully illustrated by Quentin Blake. (millions of dwarves clean up the treacle after a treacle-vat tower is breached by the evil nemisis of the book) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_and_the_Treacle_Trouble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_and_the_Treacle_Trouble

campground 5y ago

Analogies are always flawed, but I sometimes feel like computer engineering today is in the same place that mechanical engineering was 100 years ago, with the (fortunately less deadly) equivalent of a boiler exploding or a vat of molasses rupturing every other week. Does this mean we need more stringent regulatory and certification regimes for IT and computer security?

bob1029 5y ago
I would hesitate to put all of computer engineering into the same bucket. Continuing the analogy, Some mechanical engineers were better at learning from their exploded boilers than others were. A few (many?) of us in the industry have been quietly watching and learning from the explosions occurring across the street. About once a week you find some wreckage strewn across the way and you find familiar stories in the tangled mess - "Too much webscale", "didnt care about the business", "meme language crippled productivity", etc. Usually doesn't take a forensic mastermind to determine why a software product exploded - at least in strategic terms. > Does this mean we need more stringent regulatory and certification regimes for IT and computer security? No. We do not need any more arbitrary regulatory & certification processes in our lives. If you have a specific business application that requires additional scrutiny (i.e. nuclear reactor scram control system), then the appropriate domain-specific regulations & certifications should be applied. It makes absolutely no sense to impose these constraints upon the field at large.
- corty 5y ago
  It does, however, make sense to take a lesson from medicine: Networked computers with common vulnerabilities are prone to herd infections in analogy to biological epidemics, mass hysteria, etc. So it does make sense to e.g. preventatively quarantine all unpatched windows boxes, prescribe security measures and development practices for those systems, where a network-wide spreading event may be caused.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > It makes absolutely no sense to impose these constraints upon the field at large. As soon as you deal with customer PII, it does make sense to mandate a) insurance and b) standards. Just how much PII got compromised because of failure to adhere to basic IT security standards? Target got hacked because they put IoT devices on the same network as the cash registers and CC readers. Web shops are hacked every day because of software unpatched for years. Hospitals and other critical infrastructure get hacked on a weekly basis because of even more unbelievable security issues (like, once again, running unpatched software and lacking network segmentation). And don't get me started on the utterly disgusting shit you see in smartphone BSPs. The stuff that vendors do there is just mind boggling - if I were a secret service looking for an exploit, I'd start in the horribly patched-together kernels. Or in IoT devices that are outdated the very moment they leave the factory floor. Yes, we definitely need a lot more mandatory quality control and standards.

dustintrex 5y ago

Relevant Onion: https://www.theonion.com/pudding-factory-disaster-brings-slow-creamy-death-to-t-1819565362 https://www.theonion.com/pudding-factory-disaster-brings-slo...

aaron695 5y ago

Death certificates, most are not the fun drowning in molasses, but a few are which is surprising (asphyxiation), I assume the 'drownings' without molasses mentioned are the ones pushed into the river http://digitalarchives.sec.state.ma.us/uncategorised/deliverableUnit_9444be7e-fece-4bbe-9943-3f1f96653054/?view=render http://digitalarchives.sec.state.ma.us/uncategorised/deliver...

sparky_z 5y ago

"The tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, contained 2.3 million gallons of molasses originally destined for use in a munitions plant." Why would a munitions plant need an enormous quantity of molasses? Was it used in the production of munitions?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sparky_z 5y ago
I looked into it a bit further, and apparently it was eventually going to be piped to the Purity Ethanol Plant where it would be fermented to make ethanol. The ethanol would then be used in the production of high explosives for the war effort.
- sa46 5y ago
  I was curious about the specific type of munition. It was for smokeless gunpowder: > unquenchable thirst for the industrial alcohol needed to produce cordite—a smokeless gunpowder used in ammunition and artillery shells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordite
- adwn 5y ago
  Minor nitpick: They were used for low explosives (not high). See [1] for details, or [2] for a video. Surprisingly, high explosives are harder to ignite than low explosives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive#By_velocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive#By_velocity [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWcTV2nEkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWcTV2nEkU
  - sparky_z 5y ago
    The source I was using says clearly that the ethanol was to be used for producing high explosives. "...a small portion of molasses would be distilled into grain alcohol for rum, but most of it, more than 80 percent, would be distilled into industrial alcohol that would be used as a major ingredient in the production of munitions, especially dynamite, smokeless powder, and other high explosives." From https://archive.org/details/darktide00step/page/10/mode/2up?q=munitions https://archive.org/details/darktide00step/page/10/mode/2up?... Of the two specific examples listed, dynamite is unambiguously a high explosive. From what I can tell, smokeless powder is usually classified as low by default, because that's how it behaves during storage, shipping, and handling. But during actual use, it occupies a grey area between the two classifications. I've found several sources saying that it can act as a high explosive under the right circumstances.

zabzonk 5y ago

The History Guy has a good YouTube vid on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adPuti-SL5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adPuti-SL5o

fauria 5y ago

Here is a visual, physics-based simulation of the flood: https://youtu.be/KC8dnmILOBg https://youtu.be/KC8dnmILOBg I find interesting how the fact that molasses is a non-Newtonian fluid helps explaining its behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid

notwhereyouare 5y ago

Purity claimed anarchists blew up the tank, but investigators found it was poorly constructed and never tested for safety. Why am I not surprised they tried to blame somebody else but themselves

mhb 5y ago

Analysis of failure: https://csengineermag.com/the-great-boston-molasses-tank-failure-of-1919/ https://csengineermag.com/the-great-boston-molasses-tank-fai...

mauvehaus 5y ago

For a more in-depth look at the disaster and the social circumstances in the North End that led to the attempted scapegoating of Italian immigrant anarchists, I recommend Dark Tide: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/559887.Dark_Tide https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/559887.Dark_Tide

tomconnors 5y ago

The band Protest the Hero has a song about this event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNcGbAQgZIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNcGbAQgZIg

bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago

I learned about this while on a tour of Boston. They referred to it as the Boston Molassacre.