On 12/6/06, Tom C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > An interesting bit of trivia I did not know. From Todays "Writer's > Almanac". > > And it was on this day in 1917 that an accidental explosion destroyed a > quarter of the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. <snip>
Not only was it the largest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb, it remains the largest non-atomic man-made explosion ever. My family is from Halifax, and my late grandfather was a 12 year old boy, on his way to his first day at work on December 6, 1917. He was late, and was still walking down the street on the south side of Halifax when the explosion happened. Had he been at work, inside, it's quite likely that he would have been injured or killed as the building collapsed. As it was, he was uninjured, but he refused to talk about that day or the explosion until the day he died. As the story said, Halifax was hit with a blizzard that night, the worst one in some 20 years. It's estimated that around 2,000 were killed by the explosion. Many more succumbed to exposure that night, as they lay injured or trapped in their damaged houses. Another problem was fire, as the explosion either ruptured gas lines or knocked over coal stoves and space heaters, causing fires. Even though it's been some 89 years, the event is still a remembered in Halifax, even if it's not a well-known piece of Canadian history (you'd be surprised how many otherwise intelligent and educated Canadians I relate this story to, who have never heard of it!). After the explosion rail lines into Halifax were badly damaged, and had to be repaired before relief supplies and medical assistance could arrive from the rest of Canada. The first relief arrived by sea from Boston. To this day, the Province of Nova Scotia send the biggest Christmas tree they can find to Boston, in thanks and recognition of their help all those years ago. That tree is the one that they light in the Boston Common each year. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
