The Great Boston Molasses Flood (1919) w/ Cara Giaimo

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2022

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s January 16th. This day in 1919, the North End neighborhood of Boston is digging out from under 2.3 million gallons of molasses, which flooded city streets after a storage tank burst.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by science and history writer Cara Giaimo to discuss how the flood has been reduced to a quirky tidbit of history, when in fact it should be taken serious as an industrial disaster that could have been prevented.

Cara wrote about the flood for Atlas Obscura in 2019 and also did a great Twitter thread touring the North End and looking for clues of the disaster.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Averkin.
0:10.0	This day January 16, 1919 in the city of Boston, a massive cleanup effort is going on because the previous day on the 15th, a large storage tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, sending a wave of molasses that rushed through the city streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour, killing 21 and injuring 150.
0:34.0	As you know, sometimes in the intro right here,
0:35.6	I add some other context or try to sell the story a little bit more,
0:38.2	but I'm just gonna read that line again
0:40.4	because I think that's the best.
0:42.2	A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, sending a wave that rushed through the city streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour, killing 21 and injuring 150.
0:54.2	Don't need to sell it anymore.
0:55.8	This is the great Boston molasses flood of 1919,
0:59.2	which, as the Boston Globe put it,
1:00.6	turned the north end of the city into a scene of quote brown syrup and
1:05.1	blood. Pretty incredible story here to discuss as always are Nicole Hammer of
1:09.2	Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hi Jody. Hey there. And our special
1:14.7	guest for this episode is Kara Jaimo a science and history writer who
1:19.2	wrote a great article about this for Atlas Obscura a couple years ago to Mark the Centennial in 2019.
1:25.2	Also a Boston native.
1:27.1	Kara, thank you for joining us.
1:29.3	Yeah.
1:30.3	And he's sureborn native.
1:31.3	Yeah.
1:32.3	That's true. Just had to pitch that. Sureborn native. Yeah. Yeah.
	...

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