A young man who was raised by my grandparents was one of the victims in Halifax that day.
jm >From: "Tom C" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> >To: [email protected] >Subject: OT - 1917 Halifax Explosion >Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:03:46 -0700 > >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. It was the height of World War >I, and Halifax was serving as an important port city for many of the ships >carrying supplies for the battlefront in Europe. One of the ships coming >into the port that day was a French warship called the Mont Blanc, carrying >200 tons of TNT, 2,300 tons of other explosives, as well as 10 tons of >cotton and 35 tons of highly flammable chemicals stored in vats on the >ship's upper deck. > >As the Mont Blanc sailed through the narrow channel into the Halifax >Harbor, >it collided with a Norwegian freighter. The collision started a fire on the >Mont Blanc, and the captain gave the order to abandon ship. The crew piled >into lifeboats and then paddled frantically away. Unfortunately, the fire >drew a crowd of onlookers along the shore of the channel. The docks filled >with spectators, trams slowed down, people stood at office windows and on >factory roofs to see the blaze. Then, a few minutes after the fire had >started, the Mont Blanc exploded. > >It was the single most powerful man-made explosion at that point in human >history, and there wouldn't be another more powerful explosion until the >first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. > >The blast wave of water hit the shore, sweeping away buildings, bridges, >roads, vehicles, and people. City streets split open into deep fissures. >Houses, churches, schools, and factories collapsed. The entire city was >showered with debris. Virtually every building in the city had its windows >broken. About a quarter of the city, within a square mile of the blast, was >completely destroyed. > >Almost 2,000 people were killed in the blast and as many as 9,000 were >seriously injured, many of them blinded by pieces of broken glass. >Thousands >of people were left homeless in the middle of a bitter winter. Volunteers >poured in from the United States and Great Britain to help in the recovery >efforts, and children who survived the blast were photographed for >postcards >to be sold to help rebuild the city. > >Even though World War I was being fought across the Atlantic, Halifax was >damaged far greater than any European city. It is the worst disaster of any >kind in Canadian history. > > > >-- >PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >[email protected] >http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
