It’s why we see insects trapped in amber, or prehistoric animals in tar pits.

Every time you move in a non-Newtonian fluid, it moves with you, making sure you make no progress. And unlike water, regular motions won’t work. After it stopped being affected by the force, the molasses simply went back to being stable, trapping people and animals in its sticky grip. The force of gravity and the heat made the molasses very unstable. Prior to being squeezed, they are pretty stable. Think toothpaste in a tube or ketchup in a squeeze bottle. It’s a non-Newtonian fluid, which means it wants to remain stable and static until a force is applied. Molasses, as you may guess, doesn’t act like water. Eighteen of the 21 victims were Italian or Irish immigrants. It would be hours before the boy’s broken body would be recovered. He watched his son’s red sweater vanish into the molasses. Giuseppe Iantosca was keeping an eye on his ten year old son through his second story window when the molasses hit. Many survivors had broken backs and skulls from the force. Within seconds, people within two city blocks of the tank had been drowned. It knocked the firehouse off its foundation and shook the elevated train nearly off its tracks. For nearly 100 yards around the tank, the spill was chest deep. The molasses formed a 40 foot wave with its 14,000 tons.

He asked for all available rescue vehicles and personnel to be sent. Patrolman Frank McManus used a call box to report a wave of molasses down Commercial Street. The rivets began to shoot out of the tank, making people report hearing machine gun fire, and the molasses began to twist and break off the steel plates as it escaped. The tank had also just been topped off a few days before with warm molasses that had traveled from the Gulf Coast, and the warm day contributed to the fermentation. The tank was painted brown to hide the leaks, but children of the heavily populated area would go to the tank with pails to collect the molasses. The molasses in the tank had probably been fermenting for months, as people had reported seeing leaks. It had been an abnormally warm winter day. Twenty one people were killed and 150 people were injured. One hundred years ago, around lunchtime on January 15 th, 1919, a 50-foot-high steel tank ruptured in Boston’s North End, spilling 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Now, while visions of tanks spilling sweet goodness all over may be the stuff of dreams, the reality is the stuff of nightmares. So it may come as a surprise that molasses in January actually travels at about 35 miles per hour and with enough force to knock houses off their foundations and trains off their tracks.Īt least, one instance of molasses in January in Boston did. It was up there to poetically describe terribly slow things like watched pots and paint drying and grass growing. Many of us remember being told we were slower than molasses in January when we were dragging our feet and our parents wanted to go somewhere.

Great boston molasses flood plaque