Doomed to Fail - Ep 250: Taylor's Goriest Episode - The Halifax Explosion

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Let's talk about the 3rd biggest man-made explosion ever (only eclipsed by the nuclear bombs). In 1917, ships were zooming back and forth between North America and Europe - bringing men (boys), supplies, ammunition, you name it, to the efforts of WWI.   In December, a French ship called the SS Mont-Blanc is filled to the brim with the most explosives imaginable, when they get to Halifax and an empty Norwegian ship, the Imo, sails on the wrong side of the harbor. The slow (like 6mph) collision has insane consequences you have to hear to believe!  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] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans. Boom, we are live and we are recording Taylor. Happy Sunday. How are you? Good. Got a head and just had to open up a can of, this is liquid death root beer.

I think it's going to be gross. I'm going to try it live on air. I didn't know they did anything about water. Interesting. It's kind of gross. It's like watered down root beer. I mean, I'll be honest. I think root beer's kind of gross in general.

You do? Do you? Which is weird because I think Dr. Pepper is good, but I think Dr. Pepper is a little just root beer with different, you know, packaging. No, it's gross. I love a, I love a Rupert float for every meal. They're so, I just love them. A&W.

Yeah. That was a go-to. What else? Oh, I'm printing these beautiful corners for another corner of my house. So, like, half the wall has a beautiful lotus on it. I'll put, I'll put this on dinner. That is very yoga of you. I don't even know how yogi you are, but that's very yoga.

I know. I know. Well, it's a lotus, so yes. Yeah, so 3D printing, hanging out. It's the weekend. We went to our friend's pool yesterday. I think we're going to go see He-Man later. Oh, that'll be good.

That'll be fun. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. How about you? How's your weekend? It was pretty good. It was pretty good.

I have some travels coming up. I'm going to Houston next weekend. And so I wanted to spend this weekend getting life. back in order, you know, during the week it's hard to kind of get, build the motivation and do stuff around the house. And so that was kind of the name of the game this weekend, because otherwise I'd have to kick it out for a two or three weeks. So that was it. But the weather here has been phenomenal. It's been incredible. Like it's, yeah, it's beautiful. I spent a lot of time cleaning a pool out in the back pool slash the feeding tank for cows.

That's what I call my pool. So yeah, no, it was productive. That's good. My son Miles was home the other day. He was sick. And he goes, mom, is what you do all day? Just walk around the house, picking stuff up. And I was like, yes, because I'm the one in this house that goes from room to room and brings things to where they belong. If I'm in a room and there's dishes in it, I'm going to take them with me to the kitchen. If I'm in a room and there's toys in it, I'm going to bring it with me to your room. Like, I don't know why you don't understand this.

Is wand slacking? No, Wanda is a great job. But like, I do it all day long just because I'm just like picking up the kid stuff and it's like everywhere, you know? Never ends. Never ends. Sure. Cool. Do you want to introduce us?

Yes. Hello, welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures, and I am Taylor, joined by Fars. I have a disaster, of course, to tell you about it. It's a suggestion from Nadine, who is one of our listeners up in Canada. And I have two pop culture references that I think of when I think of this. And you might guess if I'm sort of the second one. But the first one is Thomas Lennon, the comedian, the comedian, I thought he was Canadian until like an hour ago when I was writing this. But you know what I'm talking about? He's a guy from Reno 911 in the state. I can picture him. You can picture him. He's great. He's all with the short shorts.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And like the boots, the new boot grooving. Right. And but he does like this bit on, I don't know what he was on a show, but he talks about this disaster. And it's like a minute and 16 seconds where he's talking about it.

But he's so excited. He starts like kind of hunched. tell you the story. And then within the minute, he's sitting on the ground, like yelling because it's so interesting and he's like, it's so exciting.

So after this is over, Google that. But he's from Oak Park, Illinois, which actually ties back to our story in a way, and it's where my grandpa lived. So, but anyway,

so he does it. But then also, this disaster is the nickname of Rob Lowe's character in Super Troopers 2. Do you see the Super Troopers 2? I don't think I saw part 2. It's better than the original.

Wait. it's better than Super Troopers? Yes. Wow. Okay. You know what it is? It's because after I saw that camp one they did or the beach one they did, I was like, I'm going to stop. I like that one.

There are worse ones than. What was Rob Lozze? His hockey nickname was this disaster. It's the Halifax Explosion. Oh, okay. And he goes, he's like, I'm the Halifax. explosion, but like, not the bad one. It's just like really funny because you're like, that's a really insensitive nickname.

But, you know, you'll learn about it and I'll tell you more about it. And I don't actually know about this one. Nice. So, yes, you caught me. A lot to tell you then. I read a book called The Great Halifax Explosion, a World War I story of treachery, tragedy, and extraordinary heroism by John Eubacon, which is really good. And the Halifax Explosion is.

the third biggest man-made explosion in human history. The first being Hiroshima, the second Nagasaki, and the third is the Halifax Explosion. Oh, oh, oh. You know what? Okay. So I, for some reason, I have no idea. I was like home alone and I just was bored and I was like, I want to rewatch Oppenheimer because I only saw it once at theater and I was kind of like whatever in and out of it mentally. But I had the time to focus on it, so I actually bought or rented it on Amazon Prime. And I watched it like a few days ago,

and they referenced this explosion in the movie. Absolutely. So I actually did not put this in my outline, and I wasn't going to mention it. But yes, because afterwards, Oppenheimer and his group looked to Halifax to try to understand what the damage would be to civilians and to buildings

after an explosion of this size, because it was the biggest explosion that they could reference. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Well, I have heard of it.

Great. Well, that's where you may have heard of it if you hadn't. It is December 6th, 1917, and two ships are about to collide in the, in the Halifax Harbor, and a lot of people are about to die. So, some context, and where we'll begin. Canada in 1917 is part of the British Empire. So it is very involved in World War I. Like their boys are going over there all the time.

Most families have a son or a brother or someone who's going over to do the trench warfare World War I. It's awful. They're coming back awful. The United States just entered World War I on April 6th, 1917, when Congress declared war on Germany. For a lot of reasons, Wilson was the president. there's, you know, defending democracy or whatever, is that my bolt point. Another thing is the Zimmerman telegram, which I had not heard of, which was a telegram that the Germans sent to Mexico to say, if you fight with us against the United States, we will give you back Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. And, like, Mexico probably wouldn't have done that.

And, like, it probably wouldn't have happened. But we, the U.S. intercepted it and read it. And that made a lot of people really mad that they were, like, trying to make deals like this. Had you heard of that? So Mexico never got it? No. Okay. No.

They wouldn't have done it. I don't think they're anyway. What on Earth is the commonality there? At least there's a border that's being shared. There's no commonality between those cultures. Yeah. So there's that. And then obviously it's obviously about money because that's what war is about.

And German new boats are just destroying everything that's sailing from the U.S. to Europe, whether it's a passenger boat, like the Lusitania, whether it's, like a Lusitania, whether it's, like cargo ships, like they need to, we need, the United States needs to make sure that their, their shit can get to Europe for trade. The next day, the day after the Halifax explosion, just coincidentally, the United States is going to officially declare war on Austria-Hungary. So there's like, we're, it's about to get big. Canada and the United States have been at odds forever. So I feel like we've lived in a state of like relative peace between our two countries until recently, which I'm not even going to talk about, but, you know,

what I mean. But before the world wars, there was like a lot of animosity between Canada and the United States. Obviously, like, there's the Revolutionary War. Canada's still a part of the United Kingdom. There's the War of 1812. There's different allegiances during the Civil War. And America kept threatening to take over Canada. Like, they would talk about it in Congress all the time. Like, it's just like a natural inevitability that we take over Canada. And, and, And so that, so they don't like each other. And a lot of the people in Canada are pissed at the United States for not joining the war earlier. So all sorts of stuff like between the two countries.

Like I said, a lot, a lot, a lot of Canadian boys are going to be sent over. And it's terrible. And then the United States will also, you know, start to do a draft and send their own people over to World War I eventually. But so all this is happening, all this context, it's World War I. And because of it's World War I, a lot of stuff is happening. specifically in Halifax. So Halifax is all the way to the east. Obviously, if they're shipping things from Halifax to Europe,

but it is all the way to the east of Canada, and it is relatively south. So it's not the most southern part in Canada, but if you had a ruler and drew a line from Halifax, like across North America, it is more south than like North Dakota, Montana, Washington. It cuts through the bottom half of Maine.

So it's not super north. It's more south than not. Does that make sense? So it is the, depending on who you ask and who's doing the measuring, it is the second or third largest natural harbor in the world. The first two are in New Zealand and in Australia, like Sydney Harbor and Australia. And Halifax is a harbor. So a harbor is a place that's like naturally protected for like defense and trade where you can

bring a ship in and then pull a ship out and do a lot of like trading really easily within that spot. What makes Halifax an excellent natural harbor is that it's really deep. So you have an out low tide, it's 18 meters deep so that big ships can go in and out.

And it's inland, which is the key to a harbor is you need to be somewhere in where you can go safe. So a harbor isn't just like a beach. It's a place you can defend, create infrastructure. So if you're going to Halifax Harbor, so you're coming from Europe

or up the coast of the United States, you get to Halifax Harbor and you go, go into a it's a it's not an island it's connected to the rest of canada but it's like definitely pulled out from it by like a lot of water and then the you go past a little island called mcnabs island and you go past that island into the narrows which is like a thin like narrow area into the harbor it's like a thousand feet across and then you go into bedford basin which is a harbor itself so i'm describing it as like it's like a wine bottle which is like the way what you want

a harbor to be you know you know you want to be able to get in there And control. Yes, yes. You want a control that goes in and out and then you want to be able to keep it to keep it safe. So because of this, it's like a straight almost. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really, really important for a lot of wars and especially this one. Fun other, just like one fun thing is that Halifax Harbor was home to a lot of privateers during other wars like the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Privateer is essentially a legal pirate. So that a lot of people who would just like, go down the coast of the United States, ransack boats, sink them, and then bring their loot back up to Canada. That's fun. Yeah.

And then during World War I, especially during this time, neutral ships are required to stop in Halifax for inspection. So if a ship is coming from Europe for any reason, they need to stop by Halifax, go into the harbor,

get inspected, and then they can go to the rest of North America, whether that's up or down or whatever. Halifax is the first stop. So it's very, very, very busy. So because a lot of ships would go there to resupply, there's a lot of things going on there. There's a lot of people being added to Halifax. So like the population is growing. And then a lot of people are like in and out, obviously, because their boat will dock there for a week.

And then they'll, you know, get, get maintenance, get their cargo, whatever it is, and then leave. So a lot of that is happening in and out. It's also become a new practice in 1917 to sail back to Europe in a convoy. So you'll remember, like I just said a minute ago, and like you know this, that U-Boats, German U-boats submarines are just destroying everything that they can find in the ocean that's crossing the ocean. So they don't care. They're, you know, they're sinking in Lusitania.

They're sinking like cargo ships. They're sinking neutral ships. And I feel like we learned this. I don't know if we were talking about the ocean or we were talking about space or submarines or whatever, but like how hard it is to find things in the ocean because the ocean's so big. you know and like um i feel like i remember saying that it's harder to find like a submarine in the ocean than is to find a football in space because of like in the orbit of earth or something like because of the technology so there's so much stuff in the ocean that we can't see all the things so you boats are

going to shoot at whatever they find so if you were in a group in a convoy of other ships you are safer because you can protect each other like so they get like the same amount of casualty as a same amount of damage if you go all together or if you go one by one. So there isn't safety in being separate. There's safety in numbers. Sure. You sense? So the,

so people are getting together in Halifax, convoying together to Europe. So a lot of people are sitting in the harbor waiting for their convoy. And you have to have like similar speed, you know, similar like size to make the convoy safe as well. Right. I'll come on later.

So another interesting thing in Halifax's history is that Halifax is 700 nautical miles, which is 800 land miles, which I don't understand, but whatever. Not yet either. From where the Titanic sink. So the first rescue ships came from Halifax, and they came with, like, boats filled with, like, medical supplies. In case they found anybody alive, they didn't know what they were going to find. They had medical supplies, like, embalming fluid. stuff to, you know, what to do when they got there to the site. There was, like, still stuff floating.

You know, there's, like, tables and people, like, in the Titanic movie, you know, but still like that when they get there. And so they pulled a lot of the bodies into, into their ships to bring them back, back to Halifax. And they would, I don't know how they know this, but I guess somehow you would know, what class people were in. So, like, third and second class people, they brought weights just to weigh them down and sea bury them.

And then first class people, they would bring them onto the boat. embalm them and bring them back to be identified and buried. That's really, that's really grotesque. I know, I know. I'm going to talk about this later, but this is actually, there's a man who I mentioned at the end, who it was the first person to develop a way to catalog bodies, which was like the tow tag, you know, things like that and like writing down everything the person was wearing and like doing all these things to help identify bodies later.

And that comes from the Titanic bodies that they picked up and brought back to Halifax. And they, 150 bodies from the Titanic are buried in Halifax's Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Some of like the very richer people were sent back to their families. But a lot, most people were buried there. And there's a maritime museum that has a lot of the stuff that they pulled out of the water. It has like a full deck chair, like just stuff that they were able to plow the water wall before it actually sink. So that had just happened. That was a couple of years ago when we're in 1917.

But now it's December, 1917. And I recommend reading the book that I mentioned, and I'll put it in the thing. There's a lot of good stories about, like, individual people and families and, you know, what they lost and all those things. So there's a lot of, like, individual stories. But people are living their lives in Halifax. It's growing, like I said. There's one school that teaches all grades. There are many churches.

One church recently paid off their mortgage and they had a celebration in the weekend before this. There are native tribes that live in the area, specifically the McMop people. they have lived in the area for 13,000 years. And then in their language, they called Halifax the Great Harbor, because it was still used as a harbor for thousands of years before this as well. They are trying to, there are people who are trying to get the Mickback to move out of Halifax, and they're kind of in the middle of a transition period with that. They're getting, they have smaller and smaller amount of land,

and it's not very great, like the way that they live, which I think is kind of obvious. There's a part of town called Afrikville, which is where the black people live, which is also pretty dilapidated and poor. They don't get a lot of social services. There's a lot of brothels and bars and things because there's a lot of servicemen. They're, you know, coming in and out. So there's a lot going on. It's like really booming, very, very active. I love how society figured out very, very early on, like probably at the beginning of mankind that when there's servicemen somewhere, the first thing is the brothel and bar.

Yeah. Yep, I think from the beginning of mankind is probably true. We don't change. We don't change that much. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So the Halifax explosion happens on December 6th, 1917, and it involves two ships, the SS Emo and the SS Montblanc. The Emo, spelled IMO, is a merchant steamship. It was built in 1889.

It's been a passenger ship, a livestock ship, a whaling ship, had a few different names. In 1917, it's in the Halifax Harbor. It is empty. It is owned by the Norwegians, and it has been, I don't know, asked to, commissioned to carry relief supplies to German-occupied Belgium. So it sailed from Europe to Halifax, and then in Halifax, it gets inspected because everything It needs to get inspected in Halifax. And then it has like a big, like on the side of it. It's like a big, it's painted white on the side.

And it says Belgium relief on it. So like you can see, it's a relief ship. And it's going to go down to the United States and get supplies and then go back to Belgium. So right now it's empty. And it's sitting in Halifax. It was operated by the White Star Line, which I know you've talked about before. Also like another thing about Halifax that I forgot to add to my thing is the Kuhnard

families from Halifax of the Kuhnard line, which is like a, you know, word you would have heard. is captained by Captain Hackon Fromm with 39 men there again Norwegian. The Emo was supposed to leave Halifax Harbor the day before on the 5th, but it was delayed due to waiting on fuel. So I was going to leave the morning of the 6th and the 6th is a Thursday, just like a regular middle of the weekday. The Mont Blanc is a French cargo steamship. It was built in England, but sold to the French. It was built in 1899.

it was a bit slow. So it had to find a very specific convoy to get it from North America to Europe. So that was like a part of its deal as well as it was like slower than other ships. It's also slow because it's really, really heavy. And I'll tell you why in a second. I'll tell you right now. The Mount Blanc is absolutely full to the fucking brim with explosives. Like the most explosives you could possibly fit in the ship.

They fit in this ship. It was going from New York up to Halifax to get a convoy and then go over to Europe to help with the war. It was filled with T&T. We know what that is technically. It's a bomb. Pekeuric acid, which is essentially a highly explosive liquid that needs an insane heat to explode. So it's being sent to Europe to be used in missiles and in bombs and things like that. So it's like a really, really explosive liquid.

It also has gun cotton, which is like gunpowder, but fabric. So it does like the same thing gunpowder does. But it's also, again, highly, highly explosive. I didn't know that was the thing. Me either. I'm like, I was like, oh, okay, whatever, another thing to explode. So three very, very explosive things. And they did a hell of a job getting it into the ship.

Like, things barely moved in the cargo hold. They filled it as much as they could. They put pieces of plywood between them so nothing would move. Because like, you're basically, it's a bomb. Yeah. You know, it's like the biggest bomb you can imagine. And you're being hunted by submarines. Yeah.

So pretty much is scary. You could possibly be. So it's totally full. And then they decide to add barrels of benzoyle gasoline to the top, like to the just to the outside of the ship, just like on the deck. And they don't even really tie it down. So like on top of everything else, there's barrels of gasoline all around the top of the ship. So it's just like explosives on top of explosives.

as explosives and top of explosives. And the captain, his name is Amil Lamedique. He hadn't done this before. He hadn't ever had anything of this dangerous before on his ship, so he's very nervous. And the crew is very, very nervous. So one of the most harrowing parts of their journey actually starts in New York City because they leave New York City and they, on December 1st, and they end up in Halifax on December 5th during the convoy.

But when they're doing that, they're not protected by the convoy. And they have to stay really close to the land. but it's also more like waves and more rocky closer to the land they get. So they're just like, please don't explode before we get to a convoy, basically, like crossing their fingers. And they're excited when they get to Halifax. Yeah, because the U-Bos, I presume, we're not operating, like, off the U.S. or Canadian coast. You know, I think they were closer than I think that they could have been. But yes, I think that you're right.

Like, there's definitely, like, they were safer, closer to land, but I don't, but they weren't, like, super safe. You know what I mean? So they head up to Halifax. And then some other just like notes about what's happening in Halifax right now, ships with dangerous cargo are traditionally supposed to have a red flag on them. Just to be like, hey, take extra care around this ship. Don't, you know, don't do anything crazy. They have removed that rule a couple months before this.

And I think it's because they were just overwhelmed. There's just like so many ships coming in and out. And some of the rules that they had, like they were more lax about them than others. Like in one case, there's like, you know, the guy that's like working on the island who's bringing people in and out, he's like 15. You know, like it's not like, you know, they just have all hands on deck, but they're getting lax in the rules. And they, like the one, so the emo, they were supposed to leave on the fifth and they didn't. And like the person who was supposed to tell everybody that this extra ship was in the harbor, like didn't. like didn't tell anybody because he was just busy.

So there's a lot of like miscommunication and stuff that people don't know. But the Mont Blanc gets up to Halifax and they are outside that for a night. And that's like actually the most dangerous part is to be outside of Halifax. Once they're in the harbor, there's actually also, and I guess maybe they were really worried about it because there are like big steel nets that go from like top to the bottom of the harbor to stop U-Boats from coming in. No way. Yeah, because they think that they're going to. Yeah, they think that they can get there, you know. So having the Mont Blanc outside of those nets feels more dangerous than having it inside the harbor because inside the harbor, there's no risk of the U-boat shooting it.

Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing. You know? This is an educational one. Yeah, I know. So maybe that answers that question. They were really worried about it being really close, really close. So there's a job called Harbor Pilot, where your job is to get on boats that are coming into the harbor because you know the harbor so well. the harbor pilot in this case, his name is Francis Mackey, and he asked, you know, the people in charge for some special protections for the Mont Blanc, but he was denied just because they were busy and I don't know, like, they just didn't do it. So he is, he spends the night of the fifth on the Mount Blanc, and in the morning, they, like, lower the nets and he can go, start going into the harbor. It's the morning now, December 6th, 1917, and people are going to work. They're sitting at their homes. The way it also works is like a lot of the homes are up on a hill and you can see the harbor.

And some of these homes that are like brand new have like brand new beautiful bay windows where you would like sit in your kitchen and like drink your coffee and you would look at the harbor. And there's like kids who like love doing it and they count the boats and they have binoculars and like all these things. So you can really see like what's going on there. So it's 7.30 a.m. and the Mount Blanc is headed in and the emo is headed out. They're going very, very slow. They're going like six miles per hour like as slow as you can possibly go. But the emo is on the wrong side of the harbor. you're supposed to travel like we do in America, like drive on the right side of the road when you were going forward.

At this time, actually Canada drove on the left side of the road, like the UK, and they changed it like pretty late, like in like the late 19 somethings. But they, but the way that it works going into the, through the narrows, like into the harbor, you're supposed to be on the right side of the road. another thing that I learned that feels very overly complicated, but I feel like it's helpful to know. Starboard, there's two sides of a ship. There's Starboard and port. Starboard means right, because in the word starboard, there are two R's.

It's a trick to remember it. And the word port, there's one R. So that's how you remember. I still have to visualize a bed. When you do left and right? I still have to, sometimes I have to think about it. When I'm in yoga, and they're like, kick your left leg and you're, like, just drenched and sweat and you're tired and you're like mentally exhausted. Like, uh, which one's the left?

Okay, yeah, that's right. It's that one. You're so funny. I never heard of him to call it a bed before. I just said, like, left and right. Yeah, our teacher was like, just make a bed with your hands. And that tells you which one's left and which one's right. And I was like, I'm going to use this until I'm 42 years old.

You are. That's adorable. Um, so anyway, they're on posting on the starboard side, which you know now means right because it has two hours in it. And the email was anxious to leave. they had been, and so they fueled up on the wrong side of the harbor. So they were, they were like in the way to be on the left side of the, of the

path. But they got fueled up and they started to head out and they're kind of going fast and they're passing other ships and like kind of being a dick about it in the harbor. And Mackie, the pilot, sees the emo coming fast on the wrong side of the thing.

And they do slow down, but they seem on the wrong side. And Mackie does one whistle blast, which means get out of my way. And the emo does two back that says, no, fuck you, I'm not moving. And then he does it again. And he does two back again, and they're like, no,

we're not moving. So the email will not move from their path for whatever reason. They're not going anywhere. They want the other ship to move. And they don't know what's on the Montblanc, but still you shouldn't want to hit another ship. You should still be careful. Like, whatever it is.

So you can still cause a fire and people can still die. But they're coming in and they're on the wrong side and they're not moving. So the Montblanc, turns off its dustusters and totally stops and tries to slow down as much as possible. The emo finally gives three blasts, which means like I'll finally move, and they do a turn, but because they're empty, which they haven't not used to being empty, they're more buoyant and they're like higher above the water. And the way that they turn, the front of the emo slices through the front of the Mont Blanc.

And what they do is they've opened. up part of the deck that has like the benz oil in barrels, plus opening up to the cargo hold that has the rest of the stuff inside of it. And when the emo backs up, when they're pulling their ship out of the Mont Blanc, spark start flying and then it's on fire.

Yeah. It feels very predictable. Yeah. So it's 8.45 am and it's no explosion. It's just on fire. And the Mount Blanc cannot put out the fire because it cannot reach the fire extinguishers or the fire hose that goes into the water because that's all in the front of the ship and the front of the ship is on fire.

So the people on the Mont Blanc are like, what do we do? We can't, we can't, there's nothing we can do. And now everyone from Halifax is watching. They're watching from their houses. They're getting closer. They're like, what's going on. There's a fire in the harbor. So they're coming in.

The boat's on fire. And again, not a lot of people know what is on the Mount Blanc, but you know who do know is Mackie, who is the harbor pilot and everyone on the Mount Blanc. They know what's on there. And so they fucking. run. They run to their lifeboats. They jump on lifeboats. They get on the lifeboats. They paddle like maniacs to shore. They do yell. This is about to be an explosion, but no one can hear them because this is fire raging and everyone's panicking. And then also they're French. So they're

yelling in French. And they take their boats to the end of the, end of the, to like the shore. They run up a hill and they hide in the woods, which is like not a good sign. People who are on the boat that you just hit, every single person leaves and like runs away on their way up. They ran through the Mick Mock Village, and they saw, there's a story. I don't know how true it is, but they saw a woman with her baby, and they couldn't communicate with her because of language barriers. So one of the sailors from the Mount Block takes the baby from her and starts running up the hill. So she chases after him, and those are the only two people that they saved.

I mean, that's a good move. To save the baby? No, if you're trying to save someone, but they can't understand you, you steal what's most valuable to them and then hope they just come after you. Yeah, yeah. It is a good move. They did say the lady and her baby. But they didn't tell anybody else.

They still haven't told anybody. Like, no one's been like a, there's no alarm bell that's like, this is not a regular ship. This is a ship that has, you know, 3,000 pounds of the most dangerous stuff you can think of on it. You know, they don't know that yet. So, meanwhile, the Mont Blanc is now a ghost ship. It is empty.

There is no people on it. It is drifting into the harbor. And it is going to explode, you know? And again, no one knows the, explosion is going to be worse than they could ever have imagined because it's just a boat on fire. So people are coming down to look at it, coming down to help. There's fireboats coming in to like to try to get it off all the things. But at 9.04 35 so 35, 4 minutes 35 seconds a.m., the Mount Blanc explodes. Instantly, 1,600 people die from the explosion. So they die on the blast and the debris.

The blast created a like a sound wave like a blast wave that had temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Celsius in it and was blasting out from the epicenter at 1,000 meters per second. So you just were there one second and the next second you weren't

like that's it. It happened so fast. It's like vaporizing. It vaporized. Yes. Which makes you wonder if they knew about this, they referenced in the up-iron movie, just like make more of these things. I mean, yeah, they were like, I mean, yeah, rather than drop a bomb, have a bomb boat. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Get a boat, fill it with this and drop it from another vessel. I don't know that works. Well, yes, because it did create. Okay, so immediately it destroys 400 acres, which is like 1.6 square kilometers, 0.63 square miles. All but one of the people on the emo died. So people on the emo, most of them are dead.

All but one of the people on the Mont Blanc survived. And the guy who died from the Mont Blanc died because a tree fell on him because they were hiding in the woods when the sound wave came in and went through for everyone. It created a mushroom cloud, which no one had ever seen before, full of debris. And like, not just regular debris, but like really fucking hot debris from like buildings and factories and other ships and things. The metal of the ship itself that is now molten lava? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Exploded into the air.

People went blind immediately who were looking at it. Like if you were outside and had your eyes open and looking at it, you went blind. Whether permanently or not, like, you went blind. It's actually going to be a lot of advancements in eye surgery after this. And there's more to that than that. I guess a lot of people lost their eyes because they're looking at the window. So imagine looking at your window and your window explodes. Yeah.

You know? And, like, you have no warning. Like, you don't know. Like, it just explodes towards you. So there's so many. people who for like years are you know like now they're all dead but like you know you would see people walking around halifax with like terrible facial injuries you know like people had glass in their head for weeks like they just everything was a mess um it's hard to do a black rain which also happened

in after um he or she met Nagasaki but it had like radiation in it but this one didn't have radiation but it was still a rain of like oil you know so you're covered in like hot burning oil on top of the debris that's falling on top of this hot cloud that just like knocked everything that you had over. And then guess what else happened? Alligators showed up. A tsunami. Geez, yeah. Because of this blast.

So they said that you could see the bottom of the harbor for a second. That's how big the blast was. And then it pushed the water 18 meters above the water line and pushed water everywhere too. So your house has just your glass exploded. your face. Your house has just been knocked off its foundation. And now there's a 18 meter wave of water coming towards you that you're going to, the people who lived woke up like blocks away from their house. You know? Oh, crazy. And like you, a lot of people are naked. Like your, like your clothes get knocked off like worthy, you think that they would, you know, and it's cold. It's December,

you know. So all the stuff is happening at the same time. People are obviously separated from their families. They're bleeding. They're full of glass. Their family is missing. There are people who, who were on other ships when the Montblok exploded, who survived, like the only people who survived in their whole ship. And they remember waking up on a sinking ship in the dark on top of a bunch of bodies. Because everybody in the ship had died and the electricity was out. And they had to, like, crawl their way out and find their way out. And there's probably because of the people who woke up like that and then just drowned, you know,

and never told their story of being trapped in a boat with a bunch of bodies in the dark after this explosion happened. there are a lot of orphans which is so sad. So a lot of children who both their parents died and it's like a baby. You have to figure out whose baby it is. And people think it's their baby but they don't know because the babies are covered in grime and they can't tell. A week after the explosion, they found an 18-month-old girl in a stove that had protected her and she lived but her parents were gone.

So like stuff like that just so awful. And then on top of everything else, there are fires because it's cold so everybody had their heat on everybody's cooking breakfast so everyone's gas stove was on and you're like wood burning stove was on and like all these things so now it's a fire just like what happened in san francisco like post-earthquake now there's a fire so entire neighborhoods are just going to be burned to the ground there is there are several stories that are so sad about like there's one where a dad pulled got to got one of his kids out of the house but the house was burning and he couldn't go back in to stay the rest of his kids and his wife and he was comforted by the fact that he couldn't hear them screaming, so he assumed that they'd already died, you know? Jeez. You know,

he's like, he has to take comfort in that because, like, I'm hoping that they were smashed in the initial blast and didn't die of the fire, which is so awful. It's like happening. Yeah. There's some big buildings that are destroyed.

Like, the school has destroyed, the principal's daughter. She dies. That church that they just paid off is totally destroyed. It was just super annoying. The Acadia sugar refinery lost most of their workers because it was like a big concrete building that collapsed in it in itself.

The Nova Scotia cotton mill was a mile away and it was destroyed by fire as the floors collapsed after the like reverberation. Part of the anchor of the Mount Blanc that weighed 1,140 pounds was found 2.35 miles away. That's insane. You know, and it was felt hundreds of miles away, hundreds of miles away, obviously. Like you could just, it was almost a nuclear blast. It was, it was felt so far away. So immediately, of course, people. start helping carrying injured people up higher to the hills, you know, looking for survivors

trying to get people together. One man who's mentioned in everything who is a hero, his name was Patrick Vincent Coleman. He went by Vince. He was 45. He worked in the train yards. And he knew that a train was coming with like passengers on it. And it was set to be there at 855. So the ship's already been on fire for 40, for like 10 minutes. He knows it's going to explode by now. Instead of leaving like everybody else sent a message along the line in Morse code that said, hold up train, ammunition ship a fire and harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message.

Goodbye, boys. And he saved the train. The train stopped six miles away. He died. His wife and his four children survived. He's memorialized a ton in the area. So now the news is getting out, albeit slowly, because it's still like a lot of houses didn't have phones.

You know, a lot of people were, you know, telegraphed, like the Western Union in Halifax, people worked 24-hour shifts for the first week, you know, because you're trying to get news out, get help, tell people where people are. A lot of the people will find their loved ones because of newspaper reporters, because the reporters would go to the hospital, list everybody they could find, put it in the paper.

So I'd be like, okay, Faris, Arkansas is at this hospital so we could go find you, you know, because we couldn't find you any other way. So things like that are happening. The good news is a lot of people are trained for war. And like this made me think of, like, I should get trained in like some basic first aid. You know, I know, like, enough to, like, clean, like, a child scraped knee, but I should know how to clean a burn, you know, and things like that. So, like, that's stuff that people knew how to do, which was good. There's a lot of stories of people who, like, become doctors and nurses because of this are people who are, like, in medical school and they're like, you know how to do this. And they're like, even though they hadn't learned it yet, but they do it anyway, you know, just because they're there, they need to help people. There is a lot of, like, fear that it was of the Germans, which is obviously what you would think immediately, you know, so people are worried that they're, like, being, like, attacked and that war is coming. but then the war does get out that like it was it wasn't the Germans it was like something else so people kind of can take a step back and organize themselves because they don't have this like immediate fear that it's going to happen again so they have that at least help across Canada comes via rail and ship the Halifax Relief Commission which was formed by like the mayor who was like a it was like second day as mayor or something like he was like pretty brand new was formed by noon trying to help organize relief because a lot of it had to be done like immediately especially like with like the bodies and getting people warm and all those things.

I mentioned this before when I talked about the Titanic, but John Henry Barnstead is the person who pioneered that way of identifying body is like the tow tag. Like, you know, writing out all the information like I found this person wearing this outfit. They had glasses like they did this or like whatever it is. And then putting people into individual body bags just for like sanitary reasons and like keeping them separate. And his son, Arthur, was there during the Halifax explosion. was the one who helped with the bodies during that. The Halifax Relief Commission would exist until 1976.

It created a lot of memorials and gave out pensions and insurance money and made sure that people got what they needed after it was done. Like I said, huge advancements from eye surgery would come from this. So a lot of people, like, lost an eye and lost it. A lot of people had to have, like, damaged eyes removed. So they did 249 surgeries to remove one eye and 16 to remove both eyes. from survivors. There's a story of a girl helping in the hospital and she found a bucket full of eyes.

Which seems terrible. A lot of cities obviously immediately gave money and relief. People started coming in via train. The trains were moving pretty quickly to get people in. Boston actually gave a ton of money. They had been one of the only cities in North America that already had a committee in case of a disaster. So they were already ready to be bombed by the Germans or, you know, whatever. So they telegraphed to Halifax that we heard something happened by like 10 a.m.

We heard something happened. Can we help? They didn't hear back. So they just went. They sent a train with like doctors and food and clothes like immediately to help. They were there by the 8th to relieve all the doctors in Halifax. The doctors in Halifax has been working nonstop. And like they didn't know where their families were either.

And they were injured too, you know, like all the things. since 1971 Halifax supplies Boston with their Christmas tree as a thank you. I know. Another thing that happened

that made it harder was a blizzard dropped 16 inches of snow the next day. Most nightmare. Like this has to be the most nightmare story you've ever told.

I know. You're drowning on top of other dead bodies there's buckets of eyeballs. Like it's just a fire. There's snow. A fire

and then a tsunami. what else? I know. I know. So the exact number of people who died is unknown. But the Halifax Explosion Remembrance book, which is the official database, identifies 1,782 people that died directly from this, like immediately. Again, 1600 people died almost immediately vaporized, like, or smashed or whatever, or drowned right afterwards in this tsunami.

The last body was found at the exhibition grounds. There's like a part of town in 1919. They found like his bones. An additional 9,000 people were injured. 6,130 homes were destroyed. 12,000 homes were damaged. 6,000 people were left homeless. 25,000 people were left with insufficient shelter.

So they had a house, but they didn't have four walls. The industrial sector was gone. many of the workers and the dockyard workers were obviously people that were immediately killed a lot of people never found their families like there's kids who's only one left out of five kids and parents you know like a 13 year old is the only one left in their whole entire family a lot of children were sent to live with extended families people from all over north america like offered to to take in orphans the micmac settlement was destroyed totally destroyed 16 deaths were reported but there were probably more it was in a different part of town so it was like less affected but immediately, but there's someone that was destroyed. Africaville was also destroyed because a lot of their homes were built a lot more poorly than the other homes and like the more affluent parts of town. There was no police protection there because the rest of Palafax there wasn't any looting or like, you know, there wasn't a lot of like hurting other people. You know, the police broke out immediately and people were like looking out for each other. But in Africaville, they weren't given that protection.

And they also weren't given any of the money that was coming in from other places. So they, even though they like paid the same amount of taxes as everybody else, they know, they weren't, they weren't out helped and their area just got worse and worse in the late 1960s. They bought everybody out for like $500 and totally destroyed the whole area, which is a bummer. There is also speculation that some people just left their families and left like a 9-11. They're like, they're from their body, like maybe they're gone, you know?

They're like this, and it was easy to go and start a new life. Did that happen during 9-11? There's like a couple stories of that happening at people. just like, we're someone like, I want to leave my wife anyways. Yeah,

my wife and kids are real drag, but now this happens so I can just like on one of the bodies. Yep. That's pretty devious. Yeah. And it was easier to do

in 1917 than it is. Sure. So, but like, that could have happened. So, whose fault was it? In, I think it was the emo's fault

like 90% because they're on the wrong side of the road. Yes. But the court at first said it was the Mont Blanc's captain and the pilot who were to blame

Because the mountain block puts, quote, it was the mountain block's responsibility alone to ensure that she avoided a collision at all costs. And, like, yes, they're the ones that knew what was on there, but also you should avoid collisions. You shouldn't be going toward, you should be driving on the wrong side of the road, you know? Yeah, why risk it? It's not your fault. It's like, it's not like you could hit anything. You know, it doesn't, it just happened to be the worst thing you could hit, but you're going to hit something, you know. So that was probably because of like some anti-Frenchness.

and the email lawyer was kind of a goon, and like, you know, kind of made it very, like, more dramatic on their side. So they had more trials, a few more trials. It was like they went back and forth. Some said it was the emo's fault, you know, because, you know, no one wanted to get an accident, but they were on the wrong side of the road. The harbor should have been more on top of things.

They should have had that red flag. So finally, in 1920, the judicial committee of the Privy Council in London, because, again, they're still part of the British Empire, decided it was a tie, and no one was ever convicted of anything. No one got in trouble for doing it. And to be fair, the captain of the emo was dead. Nobody wanted it to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And nobody wanted it to happen.

But what happened after most of the city needed to be rebuilt, you know, again, thousands of people were homeless. And this is where, you know, the city gets to decide what's going to happen. Like some cities, like Chicago, San Francisco, they rebuild after this happens. And around the same period of time, they rebuilt and they rebuild better. Other cities like Galveston, after that hurricane, like they never. never came back. They were one of the biggest, they were like the second biggest city in all of Texas, and Houston took all of their like port stuff, and now Houston is way bigger than Galveston.

There's a ton of other stories of cities that were destroyed by like disasters, natural or otherwise, that never came back. An example is Vanport, Oregon, which was the second largest city in Oregon during World War II that was built for dock workers and built like public housing and it was like super successful. It was destroyed by flooding by nearby river. And now it's a park. It just never rebate. built. You know, so sometimes it happens. But Halifax did rebuild. They rebuilt quickly.

Full train service was restored by the ninth. They built new homes with better materials pretty quickly as well. So there's a lot of like really beautiful like homes that were built directly after this that you can still see today like on the side of the Halifax Harbor that are that are still there. The actual like site where it happened was where they had like a big memorial and like a museum. They actually tore that down and put like a big. factory there. So, which was like kind of a bummer.

They did that like later. Yeah. So it actually had brought in a lot of tourism for people to like see this space and see this stuff. And now people tend to forget that it never happened. You know, unless they listen to this show. Unless to listen to the show and learn all about it. And that's that that's it.

That's the Halifax explosion. I was looking at pictures of Halifax Harbor when you were talking. And I will say it was it's, it's a very pretty area. when I think of a harbor, like a major industrial harbor, I think of Long Beach, which is like the most revolting possible place on Earth. Yes. This is about that.

No, I know. It looks very, very pretty. And it's like, you know, not as cold as the rest of Canada. So it has like, you know, decent weather. And yeah, it looks beautiful. I'll tell you a fun side story. So. And then around this, time as part of this whole effort with the U.S.'s involvement of sending materials over to,

this is why it's relevant, because in World War II, the U.S. sent a lot of materials to the allies in their fight, or World War I and World War II, but we're talking about World War I time periods here. What 99% Invisible did an episode that talks about how Herbert Hoover before he was president. He ran this like department and he looked around and said there's no standardization of the United States amongst anybody. So the simplest way to explain it is like this a screw thread, right? Like if you look at a screw thread, if it, if the angle is different, then it only works with a specific nut or bolts, right? But that's a problem when you're trying to industrialize the entire country because then only one manufacturer can only produce that thing.

Then you got to transport it, increases cost, all that stuff. So Herbert Hoover undertook this effort to standardize everything in the United States. And as a byproduct of that, when this event happened, and we were shipping jeeps and all kinds of different things to Europe to use, they were like, we can't do any of this because we never standardized anything. And so as a result of that, the U.S. standardization process became the default of the entire world. It was funny because they brought up in the context like, why does the U.S. feel like you can push its way around? Because they can't because they literally invented all these standardizations. You can't build a house in Germany without the standardizations that were issued and mandated by the United States, which is kind of interesting. That's interesting.

I wonder why, though, things like our hugs are so different. they did say that, like, the one thing, they said that they tried, the Europeans tried to get the U.S. on the metric system. Like, screw you. We're not doing that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think there's some deviations there. My mom was a home-back teacher in like the late 1970s.

And she had like, I think she has a cookbook in metric because like they were like, we're going to change. And she was like, well, shit, my job's going to get harder. So she like bought a book and like was studying it. And they were like, we're not doing it. Forget it. You know? Yeah. well that was really interesting that was that has to go down as your

glorious possible story i mean just so many bad things happening one after one after another like you don't expect a tsunami in december can yeah and in the context like i said the op-in-harm movie they were they talked about the halifax explosion as like here's what is doable with this tremendous volume of traditional explosives now we need to take all that and shriek it into something tiny that is deliverable by an airplane. Right.

So this is the container ship it looks like. And obviously you can't ship a container ship across the Atlantic. But that was their idea. That was like the thought process. Like that's how you get to an atomic bomb. I'm laughing because earlier you suggested just putting a ship full of solicitous onto an airplane and dropping it on someone. I'm also not a nuclear physicist. So I never pretended to know what I'm talking about.

is a caveat I met him cool well that was awesome thanks for sharing that was really it was sad and fun but interesting

and you know with stories like this that haven't so long ago when you're like I think once the time period where anybody who could have been alive then is over

it's like okay I'm just going to enjoy the insanity of this experience as opposed to the feelings and the sentiment that might have come from it

I mean like I think a couple of things like I remember like in my email, I sent an email to everyone on 9-11 that, like, at a time, mom to, like, send to other people, you know, to be like, I'm okay, but I don't know what's going on. And, like, it was, like, people were definitely saying that we were, like, going to be continually bombed and attacked, you know? You just, like, don't know, and there's so many, like, rumors that go around, and, like, you just are, like, what is happening.

We don't know. And regular structure feels, like, unimportant, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I have one listener mail. Please. It's from Julia. And they're the one who suggested the move bombing.

And two notes. One, I kept bringing up that the kids in the move group were homeschooled, and that's why people were mad at them. And Julia made a great point that, like, if they were white kids, it wouldn't have been a problem. You know, because, like, you know, I don't think that's true. But I also think I'm searching for something for a reason for them to have bombed them in the first place. You know, just trying to figure out, like, why they were so mad. So he's, like, trying to figure that out.

And then also I kept saying Roe House, but in Philly, it's a Roe home. You have to say in a Philadelphia accent, like Roeum. Is that seriously? Mm-hmm. Like, you know, the Philadelphia accent where you're like, water? That's the only word that I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a Roeum, whom, who.

I did not know that. I would never have practiced you. So I apologize. I was saying Ro House when I meant Roe-Hum. Like I'm from Philly. Well, thank you, Julia, for writing in. please everybody else who listens and enjoys or doesn't enjoy. If you want to write a tape mail, that is totally acceptable as well.

I mean, you can. I just like, I don't love it, but like you can. Just do it. It would be fun. Get off your chest. You just DM it too far as directly. Instead of taking your anger out on your family, put it in an email, fired over to doomedepilophaad at gmail.com, and put it on us.

I don't know. I don't love that. That's a suggestion, not of demand. or the kinder version that Taylor suggested, which is if you just want to reach out, also use duneothalpot at g-m.com to reach out. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Cool. Anything else, Taylor? That's it. Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut it off there. Thank you very much.