Doomed to Fail - Ep 126 - A Sticky Situation: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Let's talk about the infamous molasses flood in Boston - it sounds almost delightful, a stick mass of molasses, what was it even doing there?? But, surprise, it is not delightful. It was a 25-foot wave of molasses, sticky, cold, and deadly. People died, including firemen and children. What happened? How did such a monstrously large tank get built next to homes? We'll talk about Boston, WWI, Prohibition, and the Anarchist Bombings of 1919 that frame this tale.  Sources:Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 Paperbackby Stephen Puleo (Author)https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Tide-Great-Boston-Molasses/dp/080707800X/https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/great-molasses-flood/submoment/hugh-ogden-issues-report-on-cause-of-the-molasses-flood.html Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom. We are live and we are recording and Taylor, you are dressed up. Yeah, live and recording. I love that. I'm not dressed up. This is a T-shirt, but I am so hot. We just got home and I should have changed because it's 91 in the house.

So we were away for a couple days. So, oh, my God. And then the poor house is just like, the plants are like, we hate you so much, all the things. Poor plants. Do you want to go ahead and introduce us and we can do a little bit of a check-in? Yes. Welcome, friends, the doom to fail. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week.

And I am Taylor joined, as always by farce. Always here. Always ready to share. horrible horrible things um so y'all were in nevada and you just got home yes it's nevada but yes we were um visiting my mom you said Nevada Nevada Nevada Nevada okay Nevada um we yes my mom my sister who lives in Austin was visiting my mom so we went and met up with them and spent a couple of nights there and it was very fun we didn't have anywhere to sleep really because my mom had like one guest room but like another room that has a um air mattress but then like we can't all fit on a full air mattress

there's four of us so last night ended up thorns pushed me off the air mattress and ended up like just leaving that and the kids were on that one was on the floor and i was sleeping on like a pool floaty it was like yeah it was a lot but but we're good yeah the ride is long and boring it's like through the desert so it's kind of exhausting you know it was like it's six hours from LA. So what is it for you guys nine hours? It's four. No, it's four. Wait, it's four hours from L.A. It's four hours from Joshua, James. Oh,

oh, okay, okay. Yeah. Right. Not bad, not bad at all. Yeah. It's cool. Sweet. Well, who gets to go today first? I think it's me. Okay. Is that okay with you?

Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Our last episodes were like a little bit like what day is it yes you did venezuela on monday then i did hogeo broculini on wednesday that's my turn it's probably not the worst thing in the world because i'm kind of second doubting my topic so i actually started on two outlines because i was interested in one thing and then i heard something else it was like that sounds cool i'm gonna go look into that and now i have like well i have one complete outline that i'm like not in love with and then a second half complete outline that I kind of really like.

Nice. So, yes, we'll do yours first. Then give me some time to put my mind up. Yeah. No, that's good. Cool. Cool. Okay.

Well, I am ready. Let me open up my thing. So I'm going to talk about, oh, first, we should talk about the Olympics and check in. Yeah, sorry. So. Yeah, we got to do our metal account. Have you watched anything recently?

I mean, I don't know what I'm watching exactly. I saw running, I saw swimming, I saw gymnastics, but I don't know what they're individually. Like, I don't know, was it a hundred-beater, 10? I don't know what I watched exactly, but I saw a bunch of stuff, yeah. So here's the news that I think is cool. I mean, there's a lot of it. There's so many sports. It's actually wild.

I watched like BMXing yesterday. I watched dressage. It was so weird. I don't understand. That's the horse one, right? Yes, but like all you're doing is making your horse tiptoe. I don't get it. Yeah, look, what is the sporty part of that?

Do you not get it? The horse tiptoes around? I don't know. Tomorrow there is the horse jumping, which I feel like is harder, but I don't know. Also very dangerous. I did see the Turkish guy. The Turkish guy is taking everyone by storm. I've seen that.

Yeah, he was shooting. And then Noah Lyle's just won the men's women. 100 meter by his head. Yep, I saw that too. And then Shikari got silver. And then Simone Biles got gold

in everything she did and it was amazing. So all of that was good. Does she have the most golds in history or something? I don't know. It's a good question because there's also Katie Ledecki is killing it. So we are, we are, wait as Americans. We have 19 gold medals tied with China. They also have 19 gold medals, 26 silvers, 26 bronzes for a total of 71. Oh, I watched the nerdy guy. Everyone likes to get the bronze in the pommel horse. And the one of our big guys won his third gold medal for shot put. And that was fun to watch because it was raining. And like, they throw that thing so fucking far. It's 16 pounds. And they throw it so far. It's pretty amazing.

No, Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps is by far the leader, so with 28 total gold medals. Oh, wow. There's Katie Ledecki's third. There's Larissa Latina from the Soviet Union from gymnastics, who won with 18 medals. Wow, Michael Phelps has 23 gold medals. Yeah. That is wild. Yeah, so then you get Katie Ladecki at number five. And that's the last American until you get to number 15. Jenny Thompson?

Yeah. Sliming. No, where Mark Spitz is number five. What list are you looking at? Katie Ladeke is number five. Kiti is number three. We're looking at different lists. Yeah, we're looking at different lists.

have Michael Phelps is number one. Larissa Latina Nina. Yeah. Number two, Merritt Bjorn and number three. Oh, oh, you know what? It's because, yeah, you're right. You're right. These people are tied. I'm reading them in sequential order, but they're actually tied. So you're right. No, and I think Katie Ladeki has nine. I think this is like, I've updated lists I'm reading. I'm Wikipedia. Yep. Yep. All right. Anyway, very exciting. Love to see it. I'm excited for breakdowns. it starts later this week I don't really understand it I watched some judo I don't understand

at all what's going on in judo they can pull each other's clothes I guess so there's a lot of throwing I know that much yeah so it was like and they did this thing where they like had a like a slot machine wheel like the turning

not like a whatever but it like turned and then it like picked the weight class and those guys went I don't know how that works but like landed on the 90 kilograms so it was like these two huge dudes hugging and pulling each other's clothes so that's fun yeah yeah so far so so fun i'm enjoying it we watched katie ledeke won the 10 when the um what was a thousand meter or whatever no it couldn't have been she

just went back and forth so many freaking times in the pool i like i'm so tired i don't i don't know like they're all like various meter distance thing i don't know which is which right before the last lap or whatever they um there's a bunch of dudes and their job was to like ring a bell next to their heads, which I think was pretty fun. Like they were like walk up to the end of the pool, like a ring a belt, to let them know that they're on their last lap. But I think they would know anyway because they're probably counting, but who knows what they're thinking

when they're doing it? They're just like, I hope I don't die because it's been like a crazy person. I do still love the meme going around that's saying like, please let a normal person do these sports so we know how good they are. Because it's so hard to know I mean,

okay, gymnastics is not that hard to know. I mean, it looks, it looks easy, you know, which is so wild because you're like, how, what is even happening, you know? Gymnastics is the one that, like, really makes me, like, freak out when I watch it because the amount of forces that are acting on their bodies is just like, every time she lands, I'm like, please don't break a leg. Me too. I'm like, I can't believe that, like, my wrists hurt from, like, crocheting this weekend. And I'm not doing that. It's crazy. Breaking news.

We're not Olympic athletes. No. No, I like the other ones. There's other memes that are like, I'm sorry to say I didn't make it. And it's like people doing like the parallel bars and just like falling off and like being like funny. I could do like two flips on it, which is still very impressive. Oh, yeah. But it's like not even close, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's our update for the Olympics as of right now, which is Sunday. But yeah, we'll get more to you later on this week. yes we'll have more i was like do this up for the weekend and i was like no they don't what am i talking about like of course it just keeps going um so yeah i get you watch it's but i also find it very accessible this um this time it's like it's easy to watch on peacock and like they do it late enough at night that it even in my time so i can still watch some stuff live you know same same

i've been doing i've been watching on uh youtube tv they have all the sports and there's one view of it where you can see four of them going at the same time. I did that yesterday at my mom's. It was cool. This is too confusing. This is too much going on. I can't do it. Remember when picture and picture TVs are all the rage?

Oh, yeah. We're like, I want to watch my football game, but also know what's going on on friends. Yeah, look at us. Multiple TVs. I know. Cool. Okay. Thank you for chatting out out.

I feel a little bit more awake. I'm going to talk about a disaster that happened in, Boston in 1919 can you think of anything molasses yes indeed it was the great molasses flood of 1919 and so to talk about this I read a book called dark tide the great Boston molasses flood of 1919 by stephen poilo and I also just read one article um that was also there and like looked at Wikipedia and stuff, but obviously you've heard of this. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's very few, like, even remotely popular, horrible human events that I don't know.

I haven't heard of? Yeah. No, that's fair. So the book really gave it a lot of context, which we love for all the stuff that was going on in, like, 1919, like the post-World War I stuff. So first things first, let's talk about molasses. Like, can you smell molasses when I say that word? Do you know what molasses is? Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, I mean, if anyone doesn't know, it smells like, it's like a gingerbready flavor. Like they use it in gingerbread. It's like kind of sweet, but I feel like it's like a harsh sweet. It tastes kind of burnt. Yeah. It's a little, like, if you were to have like a spoon full of molasses, I think I would vomit.

Yeah, I don't think I could do that. I have some glasses in the fridge because I used it for something. And I used it, um, I think you used it in like gumbo. and you can add it to white sugar to make brown sugar. So I think this is the last time I used it as I added it to white sugar to make brown sugar. But it adds to things that taste a little bit special because of it. And in 1919, the purity distilling company, which was owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, was very invested in molasses. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why.

So neither of those companies are around anymore, but it was a big deal like during, you know, 100 years ago. it was important. So just to talk about how molasses is made. So it's made from sugar. So you can harvest sugar cane or sugar beets and then you crush it and get out the juice and the juice has sugar and like other things. Then you boil it to concentrate the sugar. And during the boiling, it starts to get dark and the dark syrup is the molasses. And then there's like you can do it three times. Like the third boiling is like the very, very dark. dark sets like lighter there's like different like levels of molasses eekness you know yeah it's like olible like virgin extra virgin so on yeah yeah so I made a thing in I think it was oh I was making

kung pow chicken or kung pow something you know how kung pow taste kind of burnt like like you know it's like spicy but kind of burnt so I had to make something called browning which was like I took a half a cup of sugar and a half a cup of water and I boiled this shit out of it until it turned into it's like a very dark brown liquid and it's kind of like molasses and I have it in my fridge like it works but took a long time and it was like it's crazy how and like this it's also like on the way there there's caramel because you can also boil sugar and that's caramel right yeah yeah you know it's funny when you just mentioned that I was going through this like rabbit hole on Instagram of like Chinese food and what I thought of when you said that was Peking duck the sauce

that comes with it it's like molassesy blackish kind of sweet thing usually if you've had baking duck yeah okay yeah yeah totally um so yeah so it just gets darker and darker like as you boil it and then like stays dark and that's essentially how they make like molasses and other things um you can also something i saw also on instagram that i want to try um if you take like a can of condensed milk and put it in the in the um like keep it in the can and put it in like a um a pressure cooker or a um Crockpot, it'll turn into like caramel, which is wild. Really?

And in the can, yeah. Maybe not a pressure cooker, that might explode, but definitely a slow cooker. Weird. Okay. Yeah. So it's very, very sticky. It's very, very thick. The thickness depends on, you know, obviously on the temperature.

So in 1919 and probably today, or as always, a lot of sugar is grown in the Caribbean. and the sugar would be turned to molasses down there and they would put it on a ship and bring it up up north to be used for different things. And so I look at a word that, you know, some words you're like, I can't, I never remember what they mean, like secular and non-secular, I always get wrong, and viscous and non-viscous. So it's more viscous when it's cold, so it's like less runny is what I'm pretty sure that means. So if it's cold, it's thicker, you know, and if it's hot, it gets. it gets more thinner.

He's confusing because I thought it was more in gradients, like high viscosity versus low viscosity, not like a null indicator of is viscous is not viscous, you know? No, yeah. I think it's a scale too. Yeah. Okay. Like it's more viscous when it's cold.

I love when we figure stuff out like as we're recording. I'm like, this for some reason is not worth it. It's very confusing to me. But so in the Caribbean, obviously, it is warm. So as the molasses is like on these big boats going north, it gets colder and that changes the viscosity as is going up. So just keep that in mind. So the molasses that's being sent to Boston in 1919 is not for eating. You won't die if you eat it.

And we'll talk. Some people do eat it and they're fine. But it's meant for to become ethanol alcohol because they use that in making well. weapons because it's just after World War I. And so the production is kind of like winding down on like being huge like industrial producers of weapons. Like we were under World War I and like even like before we were obviously like sending weapons to Europe and then we had to bring our own.

But the way it works is you ferment the molasses to produce ethanol and then you used industrial alcohol and you probably still do in things like T&T and T. tea. So it also can be in like other chemicals as well. So I kind of looked up how that works. So they like ferment the sugar, the molasses with yeast, and then it can be distilled and concentrated. And they do it and they kind of turn it into nitroglycerin. And that is the thing that, that can become, what does it say? So ethanol and weapons, its role creates nitroglycerin, which is an explosive compound. So that's what they put into. to TNT, it becomes like a solvent in the purification process while they're making TNT. So that's technically what they use it for.

So it's used to create explosives. I'll admit that even though you explained it, I don't actually understand how any of that stuff. I mean, I couldn't like do it if it gave me molasses. Right, exactly. It's like, oh, so the nitroglycerin, I just seem to obtain the nitroglytic. What do I do with it? I think also, I guess it also can you be used to dilute, some of the other chemicals to make them a little bit safer while you're making these

explosives or something. So it's very important. And that's why they're very invested in bringing a shit ton of it into the United States. So they bring it in the boat up to Boston. They hold it in the tank, which I'll talk about. And there's a pipe that goes to Cambridge. And that's where they're like making the weapons and the TNT and such. So it's not explosive in its own, but it probably, you probably catch it on fire like you came with any alcohol, right? But it's not like explosive. I mean, it could probably, it probably also generates gas that, like, that you contain it would blow, but. Yeah, totally. It also can be used to make rum, additionally to this.

Like, for the most part, they were using it up until 1919 to make explosives and weapons. But later, it, and especially at this. time so by the time that we are talking we're in 1919 we are a few months away from prohibition going into law so they're making as much rum as possible because they had like there were things where like you could sell all that you had in some cases things like that so they still have been just like a mad man i would have cashed my 401k that's what they were doing they're like mad people making making this rum so um the so so we are in the early 1900s it is 1918 world war one ends in november um one quote from historian

francis russell that was in the books that i read um part of it was everyone had like the bright promise of a future with the memory of a pre-war golden past that never existed which i like to talk about all the time that there is no mythical past you know yeah 100% so people were feeling that So it's almost prohibition. Women just got the right to vote. All those things are happening. And now we are in Boston. Have you been to Boston?

Actually, no. Really? Yeah, of all the places, I've never been to Boston. I've been there a couple times. It's nice. It's very beautiful. It's a ton of like old buildings and stuff, obviously. I went to an Irish pub last night.

You did? Oh, fun. That's pretty much Boston. There you go. Then I just consider me having done. Yeah. Yeah. But they, it's also just as important, it's really fucking cold in Boston in the winter.

Like, the colds that ever been has been in Boston. So it's freezing. It's a port city. So it also makes it cold because it's like on the water. And we're in the north end of Boston. So another thing, and this is basically Boston is Irish versus Italian. And like that's their main thing. Like their main personality is Irish versus Italian.

Yeah. So they, this is, you know, this has been happening. forever, you know, as people came in and then, you know, in the time when white people hated other white people for being immigrants. And now they can't tell each other apart. So now we hate other people of being immigrants, you know. I can't wait until I'm considered white. It's going to be so fun. I know. So North End is a very telling neighbor. I know. Trust me. I know how great is being white.

Yeah, it's fine. It's a little embarrassing, but it's fine. The, um, so we're in the north end of Boston, which is a very poor neighborhood. Um, and it's very Italian. So there's also like, um, southern Italians are more discriminated against and other types of Italians. So a lot of that is happening. There's a lot of racism. Um, and also the Italian people in this time are not like, um, they're like building neighborhoods and a lot of immigrants are where there's there, you know, you don't ever have to learn English. You just live with your, keep the people from, you know, from the home country forever. Um. Um. Um, So a lot of people aren't getting their citizenships, even though they are like owning businesses and like contributing and paying taxes and all the things. But they're not getting their citizenship. They're not voting. They're not running for our office. So they don't really have a lot of saying what's going on.

So the neighborhood remains kind of like industrial and people live there, but it's not the best. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So they're also just trying, you know, trying to survive. It's a rough time to be alive. And it's freezing.

So the molasses comes from the ships from the Caribbean to Boston. and they decide they need a tank and they need to build a tank to be able to, you know, to house it when it gets off the ship before they send it to Cambridge for whatever, further processing. So the guy who was in charge of making the tank, this was like his make or break thing for his job. So it was like, you know, if you do this successfully, you're going to get a promotion, it's going to be great. So he had like a lot of the line for making it. It took a while and it was hard. Like everything is, he had to get permits. He had to like get the right things.

he used the um he had like you know get the steel from a steel company the steel that was used was 10% less strong than it needed to be um but i feel like that happens all the time and i think when you talked about other engineering disasters like we think we talked about how like they had to redo the Brooklyn bridge because the the um metal like rope wasn't good enough yeah i've heard that with other things that were going on around that time i heard that with the titanic for example that part of the problem was that the steel being used would get very brittle in cold water. I think I actually went into like a deeper dive in this. Apparently the purity level has to be like very, very tightly controlled.

There's very slim margins on purity for when steel is actually like usable and useful versus like in this situation where it like is brittle under certain situations. And it's such a, it's also like you said with the cold, like, such widely different temperatures, you know, and like steel's going to expand and contract in some way, right? Yeah, yeah, 100%. So it should have been fine. It was built to withstand three times the pressure of what was going to be inside of it.

But like in the end, like that it didn't, that wasn't enough. But just that's it. So the tank is huge. Like in my head, I had like a picture of a barrel, not a barrel. It is a gigantic tank. It is made of steel. It has like a rounded dome at the top. It holds 2.3 million gallons of molasses. So that's a shit ton. And people live all around it. So you can live like in the shadow of this gigantic tank. And also the elevated train goes like right next to it. So you can see that as well. So it's like absolutely huge. It also is leaking constantly like right from the start. when it's built um so children in the neighborhood will like go get molasses from the bottom of it and bring it home and they'll use it in their cooking because it's like literally covered molasses and constantly leaking yeah i mean it's the early days like they probably

didn't have tolerance levels that we'd have right now well there are other it's not the only molasses tank in the world you know and others don't leak as much as this one oh this is unique this is a uniquely poorly crafted exactly yeah yeah so it's it's not even the biggest one, you know, it just isn't that great. And so there's people who will testify later that like they saw when they were putting it together that the rivets weren't matching up, but they were, so they were like putting in like another nail to like make it match. But that's like not good.

You know, you need to, they need to match. They're cocking it. There's a guy whose job is to cock it. And this is so awful because I mean, it's his job. Whatever. He had like a company, but he did it by himself in the winter. He would like, you know, hang off the side of it. and like try to fix it at one point they painted it brown so you couldn't really tell

that there was molasses coming out of it that's smart i would see that that's the kind of thing i would do yeah i had the problem that's all that exactly um it also doesn't have uh very good security around it um which we'll come into we'll talk about that in a second but there's like the police like walk around at night and they're like police beat but it doesn't have like its own security really and that'll be important in a second um so it looms over the neighborhood um and there's a lot of people that like these like small personal stories that were in dark tide that I definitely recommend reading to hear more about them but there's a man who owns at a bar called the pen and pencil club and it's about to be fucked because of prohibition but he's like saving a lot of money but he

lives like literally in the shadow of of it um there's an italian family with cute little kids who are always hanging around it so there's people who like it's just like a part of their lives it's just like in their neighborhood and it's huge and it probably smells crazy in that neighborhood. I'm not good. I mean, again, I'm not attracted to the molasses. I wouldn't be happy spelling that every day.

Like, I lived in downtown New York for a couple of years when the fish market was still down there. And like, if you bought something at like the gap that was at like the mall next to it and took it home, it would smell like fish. You didn't notice when you were there. Gross. But when you got home, you were like, oh, no.

This thing I bought it was like fish. It was so gross. So I'm sure everything like, they probably like got used to it. And then they would leave me. would be like oh my god you smell like molasses i'd be okay living next to a pizza factory though that'd be kind of fun i do like when you drive by like a bakery in the morning that's always so nice yeah yeah i love that um so another thing that's happening um again to talk about turbulent times is there are bombings all over america by anarchists i don't and

like there's probably a whole other bunch of stories in this but they bomb the du palper powder powder mill in Delaware, they bomb another steel, a steel factory, like, and more. It was actually a whole thing called the 1919 United States anarchist bombings, and there are like 60 of them, and they were sent through the mail. Nobody died, but one person, like they sent it to like senators and whatever, it was like a whole thing. Maybe I'll look into it later as like its own episode, but one maid of like a senator picked up the box and opened it, and her hands got blown off.

which is like the fucking worst I mean that happened to a guy with the Unabomber Yeah I remember So that was happening too So just like there's also that And they're going to use that after it's over To be like maybe it was an anarchist who did this

So that's like happening as well So the tank is leaky and weird There is a man named Isaac Gonzalez Who works there and Isaac is Bless his heart He was so nervous He was like, I don't like this. I don't like it.

It leaks. It groans. And they're like, it's just some molasses like, you know, settling and probably like, you know, bugs and stuff. Like, whatever, you know. And he's like, he would wake up in the middle of the night and go sleep next to it because he was so worried about it. And it was built like, I think it was built in like 1915. So for a couple of years, it affected Isaac's mental health so much that he quit to go to World War I. Because he was like, if that sounds more pleasant than being so fucking nervous about this tank.

And he actually didn't end up going. He enlisted like that in like the beginning of 1918 and then but we were over by the time that he was done. But he was just like, he would like leave his house and his boss was like, you have to calm down. And he was like, I can't. Like I know something bad's going to happen. You know? Yeah. So he's like headed in his head.

So it is January 15th, 19, 19. The man who owns the pencil club, he is home and he's asleep because sleeps during the day, obviously, because he owns a bar and he's up all night. He just saved $4,000 to move. his family out of the neighborhood and he's like they're like about to move um there's kids that are around the bottom of the um of the tank and uh they're collecting firewood and molasses so those people around it um have you seen that like clip from the have you watched the bear no i have not either because it seems very stressful but the woman in the bear who won the emmy um iio eddie eddie Eddiebury. She mentioned that she, like, it's from Boston on like a, maybe on like Jimmy Chimel or something. And she was saying how she cries talking about the Boston molasses flood to people. And I think this is probably what she cries about because there are two children who are about to die, Maria Dostasio and Pascuale and Pazale, like a little Italian Pesquale. And they find Pascuale because he was wearing two sweaters because his mom made him wear two.

two sweaters and his first sweater is so covered in molasses and they can lift it up and find the second one when they find his body so sad um so it's noon the tank is full it just got filled up and it's not the first time it's been full but it's full um the temperature is changing and it changes pretty rapidly on this day so it had been freezing and then the temperature shot up like 40 degrees which like happens but that might have been a part of it um so it's getting warmer the new molasses is mixing with the frozen molasses that was at the bottom and at 12.30 p.m., the tank explodes. And it like, it doesn't like leak a little bit. It fucking explodes. The, it sounds to people like a train crashing or they think that like a bomb has gone off. The rivets, like the

screws shoot out like bullets across the, across the town. The metal of the tank is in shards and the roof kind of like falls straight down on the wave and just falls down so the roof it doesn't really go anywhere it just goes down but the rest of it just like explodes into shards of now flying metal pieces why was it so explosive was it the gas

that's built up? I think so I think so I think it's the gas and the pressure and like the change in the pressure coupled with like just how much pressure is on it for so long and it was like bound to happen you know but the molasses itself comes in a massive fucking

wave it's 25 feet high and 130 feet wide at 35 miles per hour just like a tsunami of sticky horror coming at you and it's dark you know dude it's so viscous i or like high viscous that i imagine like you couldn't probably drown in it either it would just block your airways it probably isn't it's too thick to even go down your lungs yeah yeah you like suffocate before you like drown you know so it destroys buildings there's a woman who was on her patio hanging up her laundry and she dies like right away um it kills a lot of it kills people and horses so there's also animals that are stuck in this as well yeah and the kids hopefully died quickly but the two little kids died um the pencil and pen guy who owned the bar his houses destroyed his mom

dies um he is like sleeping when it happens so he's like super confused and like ends up like laying on a door and like finding his sister and his brother was um his brother was um mentally challenged and he will have to go to an asylum and he's not he's not going to live very much longer because he just like can't handle it he was like a 35 year old man with like the mind of like a seven year old and it was just too much for him he couldn't understand what was going on um but there is a firehouse that's next to the tank and it gets totally destroyed like the second floor falls into the first floor. floor and there's some firemen who are underneath the first floor and the molasses is rising and one of them finds a way to like kind of kick out a window so it starts to go away but they're there for hours and while they're there another fireman is stuck above them on the second floor also covered in molasses and he's starting to he's trapped under a pool table and they cannot get out and the molasses is rising and rising and they hear him screaming and they're like george hang on and he goes uh-uh it's over there goes old george and then he dies

it's not a bad way to go so um there's also while this is happening there's a sound of shooting because cops are killing the horses you know i mean that's right that's probably yeah yeah so it is everywhere now it has destroyed a ton of things and it is sticky and it's smelly and it's like the the temperature is weird like every all these weird things are happening 21 people die and 150 people are injured So the people who die They are either like smashed against buildings From the initial wave

Or they drown in the molasses And drown, I mean, they suffocate I was gonna say Give it how high it is And how heavy it is I imagine if like it landed on you The weight might be enough to kill you Yeah and you can't like swim out of it

yeah it's really bad and it's gonna be like pulling you down and also like in 1990 also I don't know I feel like I didn't write this down but I feel like you also are wearing a lot of clothes you know yeah like that one poor kid yeah like that kid all the sweaters and oh my god so sad um first responders they have to like pull molasses out of people's mouths to get them to breathe like you were saying you know so like you pull molasses out of their mouths you're wiping less off their eyes you can't recognize anyone like you can't recognize any of the body you can't recognize any of the body because they're covered, like, head-to-toe with molasses. It's so sticky and terrible. It breaks the elevated rail line, and luckily, the conductor of a train is able to stop in time, and he gets out and runs across the track to stop the next train from coming. So he definitely saved a lot of people by doing that because the elevated train got destroyed. I have a quote from a man named Stephen Poelow, who was there. He says, quote, molasses, waist deep.

covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled to form. Whether it was animal or human being it was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval of thrashing about in the sticky mass showed there was any life. Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly paper. The more they struggled,

the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings, men and women suffered likewise. Which is just a terrible way to them. The USS in Antucket was a ship on the harbor. It had 100 cadets that like ran out, you know, got on shore really fast to come

and help people. They're also covered in molasses. They're trying to help people. They find the last body four months later, like in the bay. He was like trapped under something. So after it's over, obviously there's going to be a trial because someone's going to have to figure out what happened and someone's going to be to blame. There's a man named Hugh Ogden. He is the auditor who will make the final call after the trial. So he's going to decide the settlement in and try to work. I think he's like kind of a lawyer for the

people, but he's an important person in this. USIA, the United States industrial alcohol, tried to say that it was an anarchist who bombed it because like that was happening. It wasn't not happening. You know, so they were like, probably someone who had a bomb. But then people were like, and this kind of like,

it reminds me a little bit of Lucy Borden where they're like, it's the middle of the fucking day. You think we wouldn't notice someone, you know? Right, right. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, that's not how, like, if an anarchist, like, went and, like, climbed the fence, like, there wasn't a ton of security, but, actually, there was a guy who was working there and he left early that day because it was, like, a nice day and he went shopping with his wife. So he would have died for sure.

But still, like, there's no way someone could get out there with a bomb or, like, dropped it in or whatever. And so it ended up being because, you know, it was just made very poorly. The man who made it wasn't an engineer. they didn't do any testing to test its strength. They filled it with six inches of water. And they were like, it's fine. That's dumb.

And you're like, that is very different from like, you know, tens of hundreds, a hundred of feet of molasses, you know? And it took a couple of years, like, in trial to, like, go back and forth. But they ended up getting about $7,000 per person. And that's about $125K in today's money. and like per death and they also got some money for injuries like a lot of people could never work again you know because they were just like so physically injured there was one man who was so traumatized his hair turned white and he could never stand up straight again because it like broke his spine so like a lot of people had like you know pain and suffering forever

and also just like loss of PTSD you know but these folks couldn't sleep anymore or you know would like hear a sound and get scared And I'm sure there's, like, smells and things that I can never forget. Like, I'll never forget the way 9-11 smelled. It smelled like burning people in paper, you know? Like, you know what those things smell like. So I'm sure there was, like, tons of that. And I don't smell that often, you know, but something like, like, like, molasses, it's like a household good, you know?

You can still smell 9-11. Yeah, I mean, like, well, when I smell that smell, I know exactly what it is. And in, like, Chinatown and Subway, it kind of smelled like that, too. It's forever. It's like a weird burning. If I smelled it again, I would know what I would know it right away. Hopefully you don't have to smell. Hopefully you never smell at hands.

Yeah. But you're like, it was like the whole thing. You didn't know what it smelled like. And that is it. Yeah, they pay the damages out in 1925. That was, that was it. And it was just because it was, you know, made really poorly. Also,

him and ironworks, they're the ones who brought in the steel just to name them. And Isaac Gonzalez, the guy who was scared, poor guy. He did get a threat on the phone that someone was going to bomb it. And also, in another weird thing, USAA, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, they lost two ships later, like in between the trial and the flood that were on their away from um from the Caribbean like back up like they like just lost them at sea which just feels like really weird and suspicious like they were also doing weird things maybe like get rid of their investment because you couldn't use it for as many things as you could five years before you know

five years before everybody was drinking booze and building weapons and now they're not doing that anymore so you know they like had to try to figure it out but also they had to pay the settlement I like how I mentioned to you over the weekend that the older I get the more I believe the conspiracies yeah and um and you're also uh also going going that direction is there just age is it just older you get the more you're like just suspicious about things yeah yeah like i've seen some shit i don't trust you trust you people do you say fars you formed an f no i i was going to i don't know folks i don't know what i was going to say but i don't trust i don't trust anyone um yeah what conspiracy theory were you talking about this weekend

you said something about your brother or somebody had a conspiracy theory and we what were we talking about whatever anyway um yeah that's it terrible story real gross real sad real sticky uh and you know the thing is uh i the feeling i hate the most is when a part of my body is sticky like when my hands are sticky, like when coffee, like sweetened coffee, Pfeamer gets on something. It's like, oh, God, it drives me nuts. I got to get it off immediately. No, and like, imagine, like, I mean, you would never get that out of your clothes, you know? And like, you know, it was like dry sticky.

Like, yeah, like, I hate when you like accidentally touch like a pine tree and you get sticky. Yeah. You're like, oh my God, it's so gross. Like, it's just, yes, I also, I also hate being sticky. I would hate to drown in something sticky. um it's so dark one other fun fact i looked up because i found this i i saw this somewhere and it made me think of it is that every year between 20 and 40 americans die in grain silos oh yeah because it's the same concept yeah well it doesn't fall on them it's more like they

fall into the silo and then when you fall into it it can it's called engulfment which is you can you can actually suffocate even if your head is out of the grain because the weight of the grain pushing on your torso will prevent you from your able to breathe they're nuts oh my god what a terrible way to go

what a horrible horrible way to go that's terrible there's so many horrible ways to die I know yeah I just want to like I don't want to go like that yeah I feel like

you don't I don't do they even I don't know if they still have big molasses tanks but like also I don't feel like you you don't feel like you don't strike me as someone who'd be near grain silo for any reason so that's good yes yes we're in prevent that's like an easy one to avoid for like a regular non farming person it's true it's true yeah so we'll be good other things that'd be harder but that one seems like pretty easy um well Taylor thank you for sharing um I I do like that story I also like like the fact that, like, if you casually hear about it, it sounds almost like a wacky comedy. Exactly. And then the more you think about it, the more you realize what an absolute nightmare it is. Yeah. So hopefully we, uh, we instill a little bit of nightmare full for you guys. Um, yeah. Cool. Well, uh, is there anything, uh, newsworthy or emailed in that we want to sound off,

sound off. Nope. Nope, not this week. Um, we, um, we, We did a, which we'll call it, we did an ad and got a bunch of new listeners to the couple of our episodes. So hopefully people are sticking around. We'd love it if you have. So thank you. Yeah. Again, we need to be famous.

We just want to go around and learn things and share that with you. I mean, I will just be happy if a stranger asked me for an autograph. I'd be like, that's it. Like, we're done. Like, we're amazing. Yeah. I love that for us. yeah so if you have you do have any ideas if you're new if you wanted to talk about anything we're

at doom to fail pod at gmail.com doom to fail on all of the social medias so we'll see you there join us in a few days and i will probably change my topic and do a different story than what i have researched cool you have one in the in the hopper now there you go there you go um sweet thanks Thanks first.