View this post on the web at [link removed]

Listen on Apple [ [link removed] ] | Listen on Spotify [ [link removed] ] | RSS Feed [ [link removed] ]
On January 15, 1919, a storage tank in Boston’s North End exploded. Not gas. Not dynamite. More than 2 million gallons of molasses hit the streets at 35 miles per hour — a wave 25 feet high, heavier than water, and moving fast enough to flatten wooden buildings and twist steel girders.
21 people died. Over 150 were injured. The neighborhood smelled like syrup for months.
This week’s Sidequests covers the Boston Molasses Disaster — the industrial accident that sounds like a punchline until you read what actually happened. The tank had been leaking almost since it was built. The company’s solution was to paint it brown so the drips wouldn’t show. It had never been properly pressure-tested. And when the weather warmed suddenly that January afternoon, the whole thing gave way.
The cleanup took weeks. The lawsuits took six years. And the case became one of the first major corporate liability rulings in American history — a direct line from a sticky street in the North End to modern building codes and inspection requirements.
The molasses was real. The negligence was real. The lesson still holds.
More Information:
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo [ [link removed] ]

Unsubscribe [link removed]?