On January 15th, 1919, in what was probably the most bizarre disaster in United States’ history, a storage tank burst on Boston’s waterfront releasing two million gallons of molasses in a 15 ft-high, 160 ft-wide waves that raced through the city’s north end at 35mph destroying everything it touched.
The wave killed young Pasquale Iantosca, smashing a railroad car into the ten-year-old. It pinned Walter Merrithew, a railroad clerk on the Commercial Street wharf, against the wall of a freight shed, his feet 3 ft off the floor. He hung there as he watched a horse drowning nearby.
The wave broke steel girders of the Boston Elevated Railway, almost swept a train off its tracks, knocked buildings off their foundations, and toppled electrical poles, the wires hissing and sparking as they fell into the brown flood. The Boston Globe reported that people ‘were picked up and hurled many feet.