Molasses in January: WAY Faster Than You Think.
Streeter Seidell, a comedian, College Humor editor, and creator of the dead-on First World petty complaint aggregator White Whine has a knack for finding obscure (to me anyways*) historical disasters on his personal blog. It’s with great shame that I must admit to missing the 90th anniversary of The Great Boston Molasses Disaster back in January.

The El Got De-elevated By A Sugar Rush
Perhaps this is a well-known event in Boston history, but, if so, why haven’t they been telling the rest of us about it?? The story is simple yet amazing and one, I believe, best told in bullet points:
- It happened on an unusually warm day in January.
- The container was 50 feet in diameter and contained 2,300,000 US gallons!
- The molasses tsunami was 8 to 15 feet high and rushed through the streets at 35 miles per hour!
- 21 people were killed and 150 were ‘injured’ — which I imagine means they were all stuck together.
- The Elevated Train was lifted off it’s tracks and a truck was hurled into Boston Harbor.
- It took over 87,000 man hours to clean the goo off of the streets, business, cars, cats, dogs, you-name-it.
- Some folks say the area still smells like molasses occasionally. If only New Yorkers could have so easily identified a similar smell!
I’ll stop here because there are just way to many startling aspects to this event. Do yourself a favor and read every tantalyzing line of what might be the most captivating Wikipedia entry ever. Nearly every sentence is unbelievable.
- Gookleur Fallout
*UPDATE: I’ve just been advised that every schmuck in the freakin world knows about this besides me.
Oh man, I was just on that very site a month ago! We were on the way to Iceland and laid over in Boston for a day – we walked around North End and watched a little league game and some bocce on the very spot where that happened! It wasn’t until I saw the wikipedia map that I realized where it was.
And yes, many of us learned about this event as kids from little blurbs in “Weekly Reader” and like publications. It was always in a “Would You Believe…” kinda section. They never mentioned horses drowning in those articles, though.
Wow – That’s so cool! That’s great that you remember it from childrens publications. I probably saw it too and just don’t remember. Also, I looked at some of your Iceland photos – AMAZING.
Start planning your trip. It’s way better than the camera allows.
That is a sticky situation.
Also, I suppose news of this event has been spreading rather slowly.