On January 15, 19, 19, the city of Boston suffered its greatest disaster when a storage tank filled with over 2 million gallons of molasses, burst and killed 21 people and injured 150 more.

Researchers have been studying the unique circumstances surrounding this industrial accident ever since.

Learn more about the Great Boston Molasses Flood on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Curiosity Stream.

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notes. If you're familiar with molasses you recognize it as an ingredient usually used in baking.

It's a thick sweet syrup, which if you pour it out of its container, will usually pour very slowly.

Because it's so thick and has such a high viscosity, it seems like it would be easy to avoid a molasses flood by just walking away.

If actual events weren't so tragic, the idea of a molasses flood would almost sound comical. To understand how the flood happened

and why it was so deadly we need to understand what the molasses was doing there

and what it was used for. Molasses is a byproduct of the refining of sugar. Since the very start of

European colonization of the Americas, Molasses was used as a principal source of

sugar for the production of alcohol, in particular rum. Alcohol and in particular rum.

Alcohol and in particular ethanol is also used in the creation of explosives.

In 1919 the United States was coming off World War I and the demand for industrial alcohol was at its high point.

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