Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Great Molasses Flood: The Strange and Deadly Story of the Wave That Drowned Boston's North End

The Great Molasses Flood: The Strange and Deadly Story of the Wave That Drowned Boston's North End

W. Cole, Nathan

Paperback

Series: Forgotten Disasters, Book 5

Technology & Engineering20th Century United States HistoryGeneral Sociology

ISBN13: 9798188750497
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 23 2026
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.21 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
January 15, 1919. A giant tank splits open on Boston's waterfront - and a wave of molasses kills 21 people.

It sounds like a joke. It was a catastrophe. A 50-foot steel tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst in the crowded North End, sending a wave twenty-five to forty feet high through the streets at about 35 miles an hour - crushing buildings, bending the elevated railway, and drowning workers and children in syrup. Inside you'll find:

  • The tank built in a hurry, never tested, its leaks painted brown to hide them
  • The warm-day, cold-tank physics that finally tore it apart
  • The four-day search for the dead trapped in hardening molasses
  • The landmark lawsuit that held the company to account and helped change how America builds
Drawn from the court record and modern engineering studies, this is a disaster remembered as a curiosity - restored as the tragedy it was.

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