Great Molasses Flood
A wave of molasses sweeps the streets at 35 mph
On 15 January 1919 a tank holding 8,700 cubic metres of molasses burst in Boston. A sticky wave swept through the North End at about 35 mph, killing 21 people. For decades afterwards residents insisted the neighbourhood still smelled of molasses on hot days.
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Boston was flooded with molasses the day before the US adopted Prohibition. The tank burst on 15 January 1919; the 18th Amendment was ratified on the 16th. The molasses was stored there to be distilled into alcohol. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 5 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 1 year earlier
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 1 year later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 20 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 14 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — same year
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 9 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 14 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 17 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 2 years earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 2 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 10 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 17 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 11 years earlier
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — 4 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 3 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 3 years earlier
- 1917 Balfour Declaration — 2 years earlier
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 22 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 15 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 3 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 16 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 23 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 8 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 4 years later
- 1931 China floods — 12 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 15 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 8 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 7 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 17 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 22 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 23 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 72)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 63)
- Marie Curie (aged 52)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 50)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 49)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 48)
- Winston Churchill (aged 45)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 41)
- Albert Einstein (aged 40)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 38)