Historic moments for beer

The Meux and Company Brewery, located on Tottenham Court Road in central London, had one of the largest Beer vats in the city. The 20 foot high container could hold 3,555 barrels (511,920 liters) of beer and was held together by 29 strong metal hoops. Several other large vats were also housed in the same building. The ale had been fermenting there for almost ten months, but the containers were very old and starting to show signs of fatigue.

On October 16, 1814 the metal hoops that held the big vat together snapped and beer exploded in every direction, causing all the other vats in the building to rupture. A total of 8,500 barrels (1,224,000 liters) of beer smashed through the brick wall of the building and out into the crowded slum area of St. Giles. The sea of beer ran through the streets, flooded basements, and demolished two homes. The wave collapsed a wall in the nearby Tavistock Arms pub and buried a barmaid for three hours. In one home, the beer busted in and drowned a mother and her three-year-old son. A total of eight people were killed, seven due to drowning and one due to alcohol poisoning.

People quickly waded into the flooded areas and tried to save all the free beer they could. Some scooped it up in pots while others lapped it up in their hands. Chaos ensued at the local hospital when the smell of the beer-soaked survivors quickly filled the building. Other patients, convinced there was a party and that beer was being served, rose from their beds and demanded pints of their own.
Most of the victims were poor people who lost their lives or lost everything they owned. Relatives of some of the people who drowned had their corpses displayed in their homes and exhibited to crowds for a fee. In one house, too many people crowded into a room and the floor gave out. Everyone was plunged into a cellar still half-filled with beer.

For weeks afterwards the neighborhood stank of beer and the primitive pumps of the day could not get rid of all of it. The brewery was brought to court but the judge and jury blamed no one. They found that the flood was an "Act of God'' and the brewing company was not liable.

What a way to go!

Great molasses flood remembered

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Danny O'Brien looked at a photograph of firefighters knee-deep in molasses trying to rescue people trapped in a collapsed firehouse, and remembered his grandfather's tales of sticky horror.
"Those stories were something ... horses stuck in this sea of molasses, a lot of cars, people stuck, houses smashed to pieces," said O'Brien, looking through a Boston Public Library exhibit commemorating the 85th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 people and injured 150.
His grandfather lived in the city's North End, where on January 15, 1919, a gigantic steel vat exploded, spewing 2.3 million gallons of molten molasses. Thirty-foot waves of gooey liquid plowed through the streets, catching men, women, horses and vermin in its sticky flow, crushing freight cars, wagons and automobiles and reducing entire buildings to broken planks of wood.
"They were smelling it for years after that," said O'Brien, whose grandfather volunteered to help with the months-long cleanup.
The exhibit "Molasses Flood: The 1919 North End Disaster," contains photographs and newspaper accounts of the devastating flood that paved the way for more stringent construction safety standards across the nation. It runs until the end of January.
The tank, 50 feet high and 240 feet around, was built in 1915, just as the demand for molasses -- used to produce industrial alcohol for ammunition as well as rum -- was skyrocketing at the peak of World War I.
Its site on the waterfront was convenient for delivery ships coming from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.
But the tank, built in a hurry with faulty design, was at the edge of the city's most densely-populated neighborhood, the North End, where politically-inactive Italian immigrants had little clout, said Stephen Puleo, the author of "Dark Tide," a book about the flood released in September.
The tank leaked constantly, worrying employees and neighbors. But in their rush to keep up with demand, company officials just repainted the tank in the same color as the leaking molasses.

'A muffled roar'

In 1919 the war had just ended and Prohibition was looming. Purity Distilling, wanting to make a last batch of alcohol before it was banned, dumped a large shipment of molasses into the tank on January 14, filling it to near capacity. Warm molasses in the tank mixed with cold molasses from the new shipment, starting fermentation and creating gases that pushed on the tank's weak walls, according to Puleo's book.

Just after noon the next day, nearby workers and neighbors heard a deep rumble.
"A muffled roar burst suddenly upon the air," read a Boston Herald story displayed in the library exhibit. "Mingled with the roar was the clangor of steel against steel and the clash of rending wood.

"Spurting high into the air and in far reaching spread, were great ribbons of thick-brown fluid. The huge tossing geyser of molasses settled to be-plaster the outer walk of the neighborhood outside the destroying force of the explosion, sink into big pools on the flat roofs and to inundate in an adhesive, the streets, alleys and debris," read the newspaper account.

A one-ton piece of steel from the vat flew into a trestle of elevated railroad tracks, causing the tracks to buckle. Two children collecting firewood and dripping molasses near the tank disappeared under the fast-spreading liquid.
The force of the molasses ripped a firehouse from its foundation, sending the second floor crashing into the first and trapping a stonecutter and several firefighters underneath. One drowned.
The property damage, including a leveled commercial warehouse yard, was easily more than $1 million.

Stricter safety standards
In the lawsuit that followed -- a combination of 119 separate legal claims -- Purity's parent company, United States Industrial Alcohol Co., claimed Italian anarchists from the neighborhood had blown up the tank with dynamite.
That tactic failed. USIA ended up paying almost $650,000 to settle the claims. Considered enormous at the time, the settlement forced fast-flourishing industries in Boston to impose stricter safety standards, and the flood's cause and effects contributed to a politically active Italian-American voice.
"Citizenship shortly after the trial in the North End soared," Puleo said. "The flood was a catalyst for that. They realized they needed to take an active role in what was happening in their neighborhood."
The Boston Building Department tightened its regulations after the flood, including requiring engineers and architects to sign stamped drawings and new engineering certification laws that eventually became standard across the country.
Julie Goetze, 66, of Cambridge, stared in wonder at the library exhibit's pictures.
"What a sticky mess. Can you imagine a tidal wave like that bearing down on you or wading in all that?" she said. "It was a disaster, an odd one, a fascinating one, but a horrible disaster."

On this day in history:

Jan 15, 2006: I just finished a Hefe Weizen with a pancake breakfast.
That one's history!

homebrewer_99 said:

On this day in history:

Jan 15, 2006: I just finished a Hefe Weizen with a pancake breakfast.

Click to expand...

Bill, you've inspired me once again. But I don't feel like messing around making pancakes this morning, so I'll make mine a Dunkelweizen.

The dark is nothing to be afraid of...