This is an IHeart podcast.

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

January 15th of 1919 was an unusually warm winter's afternoon in Boston. In the North End,

near the waterfront, workers sat outside to eat their lunches. Firefighters were playing cards in the garage of the engine house.

And near a warehouse on Commercial Street, a group of children were gathering firewood for

their families when they heard a strange metallic groan.

It was coming from the 50-foot-tall steel tank full of molasses that towered over the north end.

The tank had been built a few years earlier by the purity distilling company,

and locals were used to its regular leaking and rumbling,

but this time it sounded different.

The rapid warming weather was causing the molasses in the tank to expand,

putting increased pressure on the poorly constructed walls.

The quiet groan grew into a deep growl, and then, with a sudden bang, the rivets

shot out of the tank, ripping the sides open, and sending a 25-foot wave of molasses crashing

down the street. The sticky brown wave rolled through the north end at a shocking speed

of about 35 miles an hour. It was powerful enough to crush buildings and knock an elevated train

off its tracks. The firefighters at the engine house ducked for cover as the walls collapsed around

them, leaving them trapped in a waste-deep puddle of molasses.

...