180: The Deadly Molasses Flood of 1919

Ghost Town: Strange History, True Crime, & the Paranormal

Jason Horton & Rebecca Leib

True Crime, Paranormal, Weird History, Social Sciences, History, Science

3.7 • 928 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A deadly tidal wave overcomes the streets of Boston in 1919. The Candyman Killer: https://youtu.be/2AijF3vyyRs Haunted Merch: http://bit.ly/ghosttownstuff Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/ghosttownpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghosttownpod Sources: https://bit.ly/30MPrt2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Boston, Melassica. I'm Jason Horton.
0:02.6	I'm Rebecca Leib.
0:03.6	And this is Ghost Town.
0:20.4	If you had to guess a food that might kill 21 people,
0:23.2	you'd probably guess what?
0:25.0	Bad meat or a lettuce fungus?
0:27.6	I doubt you'd guess molasses in the first 10, 20 guesses, maybe more.
0:33.9	But on January 15th, 1919, that's exactly what happened.
0:37.8	In the north end of Boston, Massachusetts,
0:39.8	a large storage tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst,
0:44.6	killing 21 and injuring 150 people,
0:47.4	and it also had other strange effects that we were going to get into.
0:51.0	It was called the Great Molasses Flood,
0:52.9	the Boston molasses disaster, or deliciously,
0:56.2	no pun intended because the next one's going to have one,
0:58.4	the Boston molassica.
1:00.3	It all went down at 529 commercial street,
1:02.6	the headquarters of purity distilling company.
1:05.2	Molasses would be temporarily stored there by the company.
1:08.3	They used tanks to offload the sweet sticky substance from ships,
1:12.1	and then transfer it by pipeline to the purity ethanol plant in Cambridge,
1:16.2	used there for alcohol.
	...

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