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On January 15, 1919, a crowded section of Boston was rocked by a massive tidal wave—not of water but of molasses. The bizarre deluge came after a molasses holding tank burst and sent 2.3 million gallons of the dark-brown syrup swirling through the city streets. The 15-foot surge leveled buildings, crushed horses and vehicles and destroyed part of a nearby elevated train platform. 21 people were killed and over 150 injured in the disaster, but it would take several years and a marathon court case before its cause was finally identified.
The source of what became known as the “Great Molasses Flood” was a 50-foot-tall steel holding tank located on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End. Its sugary-sweet contents were the property of United States Industrial Alcohol, which took regular shipments of molasses from the Caribbean and used them to produce alcohol for liquor and munitions manufacturing. The company had built the tank in 1915, when World War I had increased demand for industrial alcohol, but the construction process had been rushed and haphazard. The container started to groan and peel, and it often leaked molasses onto the street. At least one USIA employee warned his bosses that it was structurally unsound, yet outside of re-caulking it, the company took little action. By 1919, the largely Italian and Irish immigrant families on Commercial Street had grown accustomed to hearing rumbles and metallic creaks emanating from the tank.
Temperatures on the afternoon of January 15, 1919, were over 40 degrees—unusually mild for a Boston winter—and Commercial Street hummed with the sound of laborers, clopping horses and a nearby elevated train platform. At the Engine 31 firehouse, a group of men were eating their lunch while playing a friendly game of cards. Near the molasses tank, eight-year-old Antonio di Stasio, his sister Maria and another boy named Pasquale Iantosca were gathering firewood for their families. At his family’s home overlooking the tank, barman Martin Clougherty was still dozing in his bed, having put in a late-night shift at his saloon, the Pen and Pencil Club.
At around 12:40 p.m., the mid-afternoon calm was broken by the sound of a metallic roar. Before residents had time to register what was happening, the recently refilled molasses tank ripped wide open and unleashed 2.3 million gallons of dark-brown sludge. “A rumble, a hiss—some say a boom and a swish—and the wave of molasses swept out,” the Boston Post later wrote. A fifteen-foot wall of syrup cascaded over Commercial Street at 35 miles per hour, obliterating all the people, horses, buildings and electrical poles in its path. Even the solid steel supports of the elevated train platform were snapped. Antonio di Stasio, Maria di Stasio and Pasquale Iantosca were all instantly swallowed by the torrent. Maria was suffocated to death by the molasses, and Pasquale was killed after being struck by a railroad car. Antonio lived, but suffered a severe head injury from being flung into a light post.
The Boston Globe would later write that the force of the molasses wave caused buildings to “cringe up as though they were made of pasteboard.” The Engine 31 firehouse was knocked clean off its foundation, causing its second story to collapse into its first. The nearby Clougherty house, meanwhile, was swept away and dashed against the elevated train platform. Martin Clougherty, having just woken up, watched his home crumble around him before being thrown into the current. “I was in bed on the third floor of my house when I heard a deep rumble,” he remembered. “When I awoke, it was in several feet of molasses.” Clougherty nearly drowned in the gooey whirlpool before climbing atop his own bed frame, which he discovered floating nearby. The barman used the makeshift boat to rescue his sister, Teresa, but his mother and younger brother were among those killed in the disaster.
Almost as quickly as it had crashed, the molasses wave receded, revealing a half-mile swath of crushed buildings, crumpled bodies and waist-deep muck. “Here and there struggled a form—whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell,” a Boston Post reporter wrote. “Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was.”
Police and firefighters arrived at the disaster scene within minutes, as did over a hundred sailors from the Navy ship USS Nantucket. The first responders struggled to wade through the quicksand-like molasses, which had begun to harden in the winter chill, but they soon began plucking survivors from the wreckage. The most dramatic rescue took place at the Engine 31 firehouse, where several of the men from the lunchtime card game were trapped in a molasses-flooded pocket of space on the collapsed first floor. Workers freed the survivors after several hours of cutting away floorboards and debris, but not before one of the firefighters lost his strength and drowned.
Over the next several days, rescue workers continued to sift through the ruins, shooting molasses-trapped horses and recovering bodies. The human toll would eventually climb to 21 dead and another 150 injured, but many of the deceased remained missing for several days. The remains of one victim, a wagon driver named Cesare Nicolo, were not fished out of nearby Boston Harbor until almost four months after the flood.
In the wake of the disaster, the victims filed 119 different lawsuits against United States Industrial Alcohol. The plaintiffs argued that the molasses tank had been too thin and shoddily built to safely hold its contents, but USIA offered a very different explanation for the rupture: sabotage. The flood had occurred during a period of increased terrorist activity from Italian anarchist groups, which had previously been blamed for dozens of bombings across the country. In 1918, when World War I was still underway, an unidentified man had even called USIA’s office and threatened to destroy the tank with dynamite. With this in mind, the company alleged that the tank had been intentionally blown up by “evilly disposed persons.”
The lawsuits against USIA were eventually combined into a mammoth legal proceeding that dragged on for five years. Over 1,500 exhibits were introduced and some 1,000 witnesses testified including explosives experts, flood survivors and USIA employees. The closing arguments alone took 11 weeks, but in April 1925, state auditor Hugh W. Ogden finally ruled that United States Industrial Alcohol was to blame for the disaster. Rather than a bomb, he concluded that the company’s poor planning and lack of oversight had led to the tank’s structural failure. USIA would later pay the flood victims and their family members $628,000 in damages—the equivalent of around $8 million today.
By the time the settlement was finally paid, the area around Commercial Street had long recovered from the multi-million-gallon molasses tsunami. Over 300 workers had converged on the scene in the days after the disaster to remove wreckage and debris, and firefighters later used brooms, saws and saltwater pumps to strip away the last of the syrupy residue. Even then, the sweet scent of molasses still hung over the North End for several weeks, and the waters of Boston Harbor remained stained brown until the summer.
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On January 25, 2005, a Wichita, Kansas, television station receives a postcard from the BTK killer that leads police to discover a Post Toasties cereal box that had been altered to contain the letters BTK. This communication was one in a long line sent by the serial killer who terrorized Wichita for over 30 years, brutally murdering 10 people and taunting law enforcement and the local media. A month later, on February 25, Dennis Lynn Rader, a husband, father of two and compliance officer for Park City, Kansas, was taken into police custody and soon confessed to being the BTK killer. (Taken from history.com)
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Eleven people died in the Paramount fire, and more than fifty were injured—at the time the conflagration had been blamed on a gas leak. Kenneth Harrison, however, revealed he’d set the blaze for the firebugs’ version of “shits and giggles”—he just wanted the pleasure of watching the building burn, he explained.
The Giggler, Forgotten Boston Serial Killer: Sometimes Laughter is NOT the Best Medicine
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In the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
GAY BARS: A PLACE OF REFUGE
The 1960s and preceding decades were not welcoming times for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans. For instance, solicitation of homosexual relations was illegal in New York City, and there was a criminal statute that allowed police to arrest people wearing less than three gender-appropriate articles of clothing.
For such reasons, LGBT individuals flocked to gay bars and clubs, places of refuge where they could express themselves openly and socialize without worry. However, the New York State Liquor Authority penalized and shut down establishments that served alcohol to known or suspected LGBT individuals, arguing that the mere gathering of homosexuals was “disorderly.”
Thanks to activists’ efforts, these regulations were overturned in 1966, and LGBT patrons could now be served alcohol. But engaging in gay behavior in public (holding hands, kissing, or dancing with someone of the same sex) was still illegal, so police harassment of gay bars continued and many bars still operated without liquor licenses—in part because they were owned by the Mafia.
STONEWALL INN
The crime syndicate saw profit in catering to shunned gay clientele, and by the mid-1960s, the Genovese crime family controlled most Greenwich Village gay bars. In 1966, they purchased Stonewall Inn (a “straight” bar and restaurant), cheaply renovated it, and reopened it the next year as a gay bar.
Stonewall Inn was registered as a type of private “bottle bar,” which did not require a liquor license because patrons were supposed to bring their own liquor. Club attendees had to sign their names in a book upon entry to maintain the club’s false exclusivity. The Genovese family bribed New York’s Sixth Police Precinct to ignore the activities occurring within the club.
Without police interference, the crime family could cut costs how they saw fit: The club lacked a fire exit, running water behind the bar to wash glasses, clean toilets that didn’t routinely overflow, and palatable drinks that weren’t watered down beyond recognition. What’s more, the Mafia reportedly blackmailed the club’s wealthier patrons who wanted to keep their sexuality a secret.
Nonetheless, Stonewall Inn quickly became an important Greenwich Village institution. It was large and relatively cheap to enter. It welcomed drag queens, who received a bitter reception at other gay bars and clubs. It was a nightly home for many runaways and homeless gay youths, who panhandled or shoplifted to afford the entry fee. And it was one of the few—if not the only—gay bar left that allowed dancing.
Raids were still a fact of life, but usually corrupt cops would tip off Mafia-run bars before they occurred, allowing owners to stash the alcohol (sold without a liquor license) and hide other illegal activities. In fact, the NYPD had stormed Stonewall Inn just a few days before the riot-inducing raid.
THE STONEWALL RIOTS BEGIN
When police raided Stonewall Inn on the morning of June 28, it came as a surprise—the bar wasn’t tipped off this time.
Armed with a warrant, police officers entered the club, roughed up patrons, and, finding bootlegged alcohol, arrested 13 people, including employees and people violating the state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute (female officers would take suspected cross-dressing patrons into the bathroom to check their sex).
Fed up with constant police harassment and social discrimination, angry patrons and neighborhood residents hung around outside of the bar rather than disperse, becoming increasingly agitated as the events unfolded and people were aggressively manhandled. At one point, an officer hit a lesbian over the head as he forced her into the paddy wagon — she shouted to onlookers to act, inciting the crowd to begin throw pennies, bottles, cobble stones, and other objects at the police.
Within minutes, a full-blown riot involving hundreds of people began. The police, a few prisoners, and a Village Voice writer barricaded themselves in the bar, which the mob attempted to set on fire after breaching the barricade repeatedly.
The fire department and a riot squad were eventually able to douse the flames, rescue those inside Stonewall, and disperse the crowd. But the protests, sometimes involving thousands of people, continued in the area for five more days, flaring up at one point after the Village Voice published its account of the riots.
Though the Stonewall uprising didn’t start the gay rights movement, it was a galvanizing force for LGBT political activism, leading to numerous gay rights organizations, including the Gay Liberation Front, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).
In 2016, President Barack Obama designated the site of the riots—Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets and sidewalks—a national monument in recognition of the area’s contribution to gay and human rights.
Marsha P. Johnson's and Sylvia Rivera's roles in the riots (as well as the overall role that transgender individuals, trans poc in particular, have played helping us come as far as we have) are often underplayed or credited to others, so I wanted to share a couple links about these two amazing women. https://www.biography.com/people/mars...
https://sylvia-rivera.weebly.com/
https://sites.psu.edu/womeninhistory/...
It's a great thing when a crime -- rioting is still a crime! -- leads us to something much better than we had before. Stonewall was one of those moments.May it come true for the people who rioted at Ferguson and other places around the country. That discrimination needs to stop, like, 2 centuries ago.
Caitlin wrote: "Marsha P. Johnson's and Sylvia Rivera's roles in the riots (as well as the overall role that transgender individuals, trans poc in particular, have played helping us come as far as we have) are oft..."Hello, Caitlin,
Can you please tell me what "trans poc" means?
Thanks, HB
Caitlin wrote: "Marsha P. Johnson's and Sylvia Rivera's roles in the riots (as well as the overall role that transgender individuals, trans poc in particular, have played helping us come as far as we have) are oft..."Hello, Caitlin,
Can you please tell me what "trans poc" means.
Thanks, HB
PS: Also "demisexual".
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"Transgender people of color"
"Demisexuality is a sexual orientation where people only experience sexual attraction to folks that they have close emotional connections with. In other words, demisexual people only experience sexual attraction after an emotional bond has formed."
Ahh...Thanks for the clarification, Caitlin.
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Your annual reminder of the Mountain Meadows Massacre - on this day in 1857 Mormons attacked, captured, and murdered at point-blank range an estimated 120 innocent pioneers traveling from Arkansas to California. Among the killed were 50 children.
From Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven:
Out of the entire Fancher wagon train, only seventeen lives were spared — all of them children no more than five years old, deemed too young to remember enough to bear witness against the [Mormons].
Those children not killed were taken to Mormon homes to be raised as Latter-day Saints; some were placed in households of the very men who had murdered their parents and siblings. In 1859 an agent of the federal government managed to find all seventeen survivors and return them to their Arkansas kin, but before handing the kids over, their Mormon keepers had the audacity to demand thousands of dollars in payment for feeding and schooling the youngsters while they were in the [Mormons'] care.
The Mormons had convinced a contingent of Southern Paiute Indian warriors to accompany them on the raid, painting their own white faces dark to look like their Paiute accomplices in an attempt to avoid blame. From Krakauer:
The Mormon militiamen, [Mormon military leader John D.] Lee reported, "piled the dead bodies up in heaps, in little gullies, and threw dirt over them. The bodies were only lightly covered, for the ground was hard, and the brethren did not have sufficient tools to dig with." Within days, wolves and other scavengers had scattered their remains across the meadow.
Upon completion of this halfhearted, hastily undertaken burial, according to Lee, the [Mormons] gathered in a circle at the site of the mass murder to offer "thanks to God for delivering our enemies into our hands." Then the overseers of the massacre reiterated "the necessity of always saying the Indians did it alone, and that the Mormons had nothing to do with it...It was voted unanimously that any man who should divulge the secret, or tell who was present, or do anything that would lead to a discovery of the truth, should suffer death."
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1966 Aberfan Mine Disaster
The avalanche raced down a steep hill in Aberfan, Wales, sucking everything in its path into the chaos: landscape, buildings, an entire schoolhouse. When David Evans, the owner of a local pub, heard about it from a neighbor, he ran into the street. “Everything was so quiet, so quiet,” he told historian Gaynor Madgewick. “All I could see was the apex of the roofs.”
The avalanche wasn’t snow—it was coal waste that had slid down a rain-saturated mountainside. On October 21, 1966, nearly 140,000 cubic yards of black slurry cascaded down the hill above Aberfan. It destroyed everything it touched, eventually killing 144 people, most of them children sitting in their school classrooms.
The tragedy in Aberfan would become one of the United Kingdom’s worst mining disasters—and it was completely avoidable.
. . .
Coal mining creates waste, and the waste rock was dumped in an area called a tip. Merthyr Vale had seven tips. By 1966, the seventh tip, which was begun in 1958, was about 111 feet high and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. It was precariously placed on sandstone above a natural spring, which lay on the steep hill above the village.
As mining progressed, the heaps of waste grew and grew. In 1963 and 1964 residents and local officials had raised concerns about the seventh tip’s location with the National Coal Board, which owned and operated the mine. They were especially worried because the tip was located right above Pantlas Junior School, which was attended by about 240 students.
Those concerns were all too prescient, but the National Coal Board ignored them. “The threat was implicit,” notes the BBC: “make a fuss and the mine would close.”
. . .
A tribunal later concluded that the National Coal Board was responsible for the disaster after examining 300 exhibits and interviewing 136 witnesses. “The Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented,” said the tribunal in its report. The disaster was a matter “not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communications,” it wrote.
Great Britain quickly mobilized on behalf of the people in Aberfan. The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund, which was set up on the day of the disaster, raised the equivalent of $16.6 million in modern dollars. The money was used to pay for repairs in the village and the care of those who were injured and bereaved in the disaster.
But the money also had to help pay for the removal of the remaining tips that lurked above the village. The head of the National Coal Board refused to visit Aberfan and parents of children had to prove they were “close” to their children to receive a payment of £500 from the board. The funds for removing the tips were only repaid in 1997—without interest.
Wow. How exactly do you prove that you were close to your children?
Fishface wrote: "Wow. How exactly do you prove that you were close to your children?"Excellent question! And why would the National Coal Board (NCB) feel entitled to ask that of the parents? The NCB were probably entitled white men.
Hari wrote: "Fishface wrote: "Wow. How exactly do you prove that you were close to your children?"Excellent question! And why would the National Coal Board (NCB) feel entitled to ask that of the parents? The ..."
Well, that's an overwhelmingly white corner of the planet. But entitled? Of this I have no doubt.
"On this day in 1985, Philadelphia police engaged in a gun battle with black radical group MOVE, then dropped a bomb on their home, killing 11 and making hundreds homeless. This is a short account of the shocking events: "
https://libcom.org/library/move-bombi...