Now that is a sticky situation!

Quick! Amble for your lives!

And the day after the tank blew up, Prohibition was ratified!

Bet it took a lot of pancakes to clean that up...

dj_bigbird: And the day after the tank blew up, Prohibition was ratified!

ZOMG, it was an inside jorb!

So those who were trapped and killed were slower than molasses in January?

35 mph? I guess that metaphor is no longer applicable.

PoopStain:
Plus, if you can't outrun rampant molasses, then maybe you shouldn't deserve to survive anyway.

FTFA: "sending a wall of molasses - estimated to be traveling at 35 miles per hour"

Not sure I could run 35 mph - you?

The Boston Molassacre?

Mr. Right: Not sure I could run 35 mph - you?

You don't have to outrun the molasses. You just have to outrun your girlfriend.

Oh wait. That works for lions, not molasses.
Never mind.

Now if only they had a big tank of baked beans blow up...

Mr. Right: PoopStain:
Plus, if you can't outrun rampant molasses, then maybe you shouldn't deserve to survive anyway.

FTFA: "sending a wall of molasses - estimated to be traveling at 35 miles per hour"

Not sure I could run 35 mph - you?

Well if molasses can go 35 mph, I don't understand where the phrase "slower than molasses" came from. It seems to me that everyone, at least all humans would be slower than molasses.

Perhaps it was initially used ironically. And then later, it was misused, much like the word irregardless.

Or maybe it was one of the words with an asterisk, like the home run record. You know--- He was slower than molasses* that day.

*Molasses at room temperature.

That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic

x10nd: That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic

Of course not - it was only 21 years ago. Give it another 1.3 years and we can all have a laugh.

x10nd: That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic

Welcome to Fark?

x10nd: That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic.

If the entire audience of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" were Farkers, and the contestant, who needed to win to pay for an operation for his dying mother, were to "ask the audience", the pricks would lie.

I think this is a job for Myth Busters to work on.

Can molasses *really* move at 35mph?

They talked about this in my "Intro to Engineering" class. They blame it on a design fault of container, and use it as an example of how your decisions can impact people in ways you might not expect. I think it's much more effective than talking about some random bridge that collapsed. I don't think I'll ever forget this story.

x10nd: That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic

They'd all be dead by now anyway. And it was 21 people. Who couldn't outrun molasses. In Boston. In the wintertime.

wow, all that because of these?



now thats some serious asses

I LOL'ed, MythDragon.

I'm drinking rum to celebrate commemorate the event.

Sweet sassy molassy!

justinmypants: They talked about this in my "Intro to Engineering" class. They blame it on a design fault of container, and use it as an example of how your decisions can impact people in ways you might not expect. I think it's much more effective than talking about some random bridge that collapsed. I don't think I'll ever forget this story.

The actual story is a lot more complex, but yes, it mostly comes down to severe and knowledgeable douchebaggery on the company's fault: the tank was of a scale and design never tested and not even validated by anyone with any engineering qualifications, mostly in order to save money. Even then, it wasn't even built to its own inadequate specs.

As for the "might not expect" part, the company was warned many times that the tank was unsafe, and surely understood the implications. The tank leaked horribly when under any kind of stress, from practically every seam. At one point late in this tragic story, they 'fixed' the problem by repainting the tank in the colour of leaking molasses. (Which inspired their chief managing engineer to quit, a choice that saved his life, as he normally worked very close to and even inside the tank.)

The tank failed early on an unusually warm January morning. (Fermentation is partly blamed.) While ordinary molasses does run very slowly most of the time, and even more so when cold, a very high column of it that has warmed and is under pressure can obviously blow apart a steel tank and then collapse outward very quickly in all directions, with tremendous force of weight and mass.

The 'black tide' killed people and horses, flung huge ragged sheets of the steel vessel through the air, tore down part of an elevated train (just narrowly avoiding killing everyone on not one but two trains), crushed a pub with an family living on the second floor, and knocked a brick firehouse off its foundation, trapping three firemen underneath in a rising wall of molasses making its way to sea. (One of the pinned firemen drowned when he could no longer hold his head up, the horror being all the more because he knew, and actually announced when he was about to die.)

The evidence of malfeasance by the company (U.S. Industrial Alcohol) was so great that they agreed to a settlement based on the judicial investigation alone, rather than face trial.

How it happened: Besides the tank being structurally unsound, USIA filled it to an unprecedented volume in a last-ditch effort to cash out of the rotgut rum market, as they knew that Prohibition was imminent. Their main business before that was alcohol for industry and munitions.

It's a hell of a story and well worth the read.

Good riddance!

Molasses in amounts you're likely to encounter moves slowly because its viscosity is so high that the force of cohesion between its molecules is barely overcome by the force of gravity. But when you have two million gallons of it, its mass is so great that it easily overcomes that.

I remember as a small child seeing a sign commemorating the disaster with a phrase "A wave of molasses killed 21...", and I asked my mom about it. She thought it was too disturbing for a child and wouldn't talk about it. For a long time after that, I thought "molasses" was some type of communicable disease.

Its_A_Tarp: x10nd: That headline is not funny. 90 people died, it was tragic

Welcome to Fark?

Its a tarp

I find the pun to be extreamly funny.

Hell it was 90 years ago.
It didn't take but 34 minutes before the first Challanger expolsion jokes to start (Need Another Seven Astonauts)

Now of course had it been 5 years ago, and my mom died in the accident, I wouldn't find it funny at all. But since it was no one I know, and a long time ago...not to mention a *Very* odd way of dying...it's funny.

50 years from now people will probably find 9/11 jokes funny. I'll wave my cane and tell them to get off my lawn. But they won't care as it had nothing to do with them. Thats just how people are.

MythDragon: It didn't take but 34 minutes before the first Challanger expolsion jokes to start (Need Another Seven Astonauts)

I first heard that from my brother...who works for NASA.

Walk for your lives!

No, you can't still smell the molasses on a hot, or wet day down there.

You smell the ocean and Italian food and bus exhaust.

x10nd: 90 people died,

Ah relax, it was just some Bostonians. Not actual humans.

/ducks
//loves Boston, really

It's even funnier if you call it treacle.

Robert1966: It's even funnier if you call it treacle.

It would also be funnier to call it 'cane juice' but it's not that, either.

You know, the last time this disaster was mentioned on Fark, at least someone had the sense to use the Sappy tag...

Atilla the Hun died of a nosebleed in 453 A.D. It was tragic, don't laugh.

I love the History Channel because they have this engineering disaster on at least every month or two. Does anyone have a picture of that old guy that is their expert? He went over the hotel bridge disaster in Kansas City.

the webcomic somethingpositive.net made fun of that a few years ago.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: [snip]

It's a hell of a story and well worth the read.

Yeah, most definitely. It may be funny to laugh at, but the book gets pretty graphic about what it's like to drown in molasses... ugh. Really interesting book.

Robert1966: Molasses in amounts you're likely to encounter moves slowly because its viscosity is so high that the force of cohesion between its molecules is barely overcome by the force of gravity. But when you have two million gallons of it, its mass is so great that it easily overcomes that.

Also not to mention that it was stored heated, so it flowed faster.

MythDragon: Its a tarp

I find the pun to be extreamly funny.

Hell it was 90 years ago.
It didn't take but 34 minutes before the first Challanger expolsion jokes to start (Need Another Seven Astonauts)

Now of course had it been 5 years ago, and my mom died in the accident, I wouldn't find it funny at all. But since it was no one I know, and a long time ago...not to mention a *Very* odd way of dying...it's funny.

50 years from now people will probably find 9/11 jokes funny. I'll wave my cane and tell them to get off my lawn. But they won't care as it had nothing to do with them. Thats just how people are.


50 years? Why wait that long? Gilbert Gottfried only waited two weeks, and his joke was pretty decent (source: The Aristocrats)

Someone put up the Hulk Hogan 9/11 pics, I'm fork-deep in a short stack to commemorate the Molassacre.

/doesn't take much arm-twisting to cause pancake eating around here

You know, it really isn't funny. I mean, the people who make molasses have been trying to overcome its stigma of being a harbinger of sweet, sweet death ever since.

/I would have gladly licked the dirty Boston ground