Here's another fun piece from my collection of strange (but true) stuff:
Welcome to Weirdsville - this time it's on the largest (non-nuclear) blasts on earth.
KABOOM
For
most of us BOOM, KABLAM, KABLOOIE mean a mushroom cloud and a cute
little animated turtle talking about ducking and covering – as well as
the possible End Of All Life As We Know It.
But,
unfortunately, not every monstrous explosion began with J. Robert
Oppenheimer saying "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Even putting aside natural blasts such as the eruption of Krakatoa,
which was so massive the sound of it was heard as far away as London,
the earth has still to be rocked by more than its fair share of
man-made, non-atomic BOOMs, KABLAMs, and KABLOOIEs.
One
of the more terrifying non-nuclear explosions ever to occur was in 1917
up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Back in December of that year the
Mont-Blanc plowed into another ship, the Imo, starting a ferocious fire.
Ten minutes later the Mont-Blanc went up, creating what is commonly
considered to be one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in earth
history.
The Mont-Blanc was a big ship carrying a lot
of extremely dangerous cargo – almost 3,000 tons of munitions bound for
the war that was then tearing Europe apart. What happened that morning,
which lead to the blast and the nightmarish loss of life, reads like a
textbook example of whatever could go wrong, did. To avoid being
torpedoed, the Mont-Blanc wasn't flying any dangerous cargo flags, so no
one except for her crew knew her cargo was so dangerous. When the fire
got out of control, the Mont-Blanc's crew tried to warn as many people
as possible – but they only spoke French and the language of Halifax was
English. Not realizing the danger, crowds began to form to watch the
blaze. The Mont-Blanc, on fire, also began to drift toward a nearby pier
... that was also packed with munitions bound for the war.
When
everything finally came together – the criminal negligence, the
miscommunication, and worst of all the fire and the explosives – the
blast was roughly equal to 3 kilotons of TNT. The fireball roared up
above the town and the shockwave utterly destroyed the town and
everything within one mile of the epicenter. Metal and wreckage fell as
far away as 80 miles from the blast and the sound of the detonation was
heard more than 225 miles away. The explosion was so huge it generated a
tsunami that roared away from the epicenter and then back into the
harbor again, adding to the death and destruction.
It
wasn't until days later that the true horror of what had happened was
realized: Halifax was completely gone, erased from the face of the
earth, along with every ship in the harbor and most of the nearby town
of Dartmouth. Approximately 2,000 people died from the explosion and
another 9,000 were injured.
Unfortunately Halifax
wasn't the first such explosives-related accident in 1917. Unbelievably,
before the Mont-Blanc destroyed the town, 73 people were killed in the
explosion of a munitions factory in Silvertown in West Ham, Essex. The
sound was heard as far away as 100 miles. A year earlier, the Johnson
Barge No.17 went up Jersey City. Although only a few people were killed,
the explosion managed to damage not only Ellis Island but also the
Statue of Liberty. There were many other blasts as well, but these are
only a few of the more dreadful highlights.
You'd
think after these nightmarish explosions, caution about things that go
BOOM would have sunk in a bit, but the second world war also saw more
than its fair share of explosive accidents. In 1944, for instance, the
SS Fort Stikine went up while docked in Bombay, India. When her cargo
went up, the blast killed 800 men and injured 3,000. The fire that
followed took more than three days to control.
Also
in 1944, the UK experienced what is commonly considered the largest
blast ever to occur on British soil when 3,700 tons of high explosives
were accidentally detonated in an underground munitions store in Fauld,
Staffordshire. The explosion was so massive it formed a crater 3⁄4 of a
mile across and more than 400 feet deep – and destroyed not only the
base but a nearby reservoir (and all the water in it).
But
one of the biggest blasts – aside from the two atomic bombs dropped on
Japan – was also one of the largest in human history, and one of the
most tragic.
Once again in 1944, on July 17 to be
specific, munitions being loaded onto a ship in Port Chicago,
California, (very close to San Francisco) detonated. No one knows what
exactly caused the blast, but the damage was biblical. All in all, more
than 5,000 tons of high explosives, plus whatever else was in the stores
on the base and on any ships docked, was involved. The explosion was so
massive it was felt as far away as Las Vegas (500 miles distant) and
people were injured all over the Bay Area when windows were shattered by
the immense pressure wave.
320 were killed immediately
and almost 400 were seriously injured, but that's not the real tragedy.
Most of these men were African American and this single disaster
accounted for almost 15% of African American casualties during that war.
Still fearing for their safety, the remaining men,
who had just spent three weeks pulling the bodies of their fellow
sailors from the wreckage, refused to load any further munitions. The
Army, in a characteristic show of support, considered this an act of
mutiny and court-martialed 208 sailors, sending an additional 50 to jail
for 8 to 15 years.
Fortunately, the 'mutineers' were
given clemency after Thurgood Marshall fought for them, though the final
member only received justice in 1999 in the form of a Presidential
pardon by President Bill Clinton.
Today in Port
Chicago there's a marker on the spot and it states that the event was a
step toward "racial justice and equality."
And all it
took was one of the largest non-nuclear, man-made, blasts in the history
of the world – and the deaths of 320 sailors.
Wiki:
