Stumbled on this:
The detonation..took one-fifteenth of a second, five times faster than the blink of an eye. The epicenter of the explosion instantaneously shot up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about six times hotter than molten lava…The explosion started in the gigantic steel casement of the cargo hold, which had been packed tight and was far too small to contain such an exponential expansion. The blast shot outward in all directions at 3,400 miles per hour, or four times the speed of sound. It tore through the ship’s steel hull like wet tissue paper, converting the vessel into a monstrous hand grenade. The heat vaporized the water surrounding the ship and the people trying to tie her up and put out the fire. The remains of these victims were never found because there were no remains to find…”
- John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion
One hundred years ago, in the midst of one of the bloodiest and calamitous wars in human history, some 2,000 people in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were obliterated by one of the largest manmade explosions ever created. On December 6, 1917, a cargo ship called the Mont Blanc collided with a second ship, the Imo, in the Narrows of Halifax Harbor. The Mont Blanc was packed to the gills with explosive material:
62 tons of gun cotton, similar to dynamite; 246 tons of a new and particularly combustible airplane fuel called benzol, packed in 494 thin steel drums and stacked three and four barrels high; 250 tons of TNT; and 2,366 tons of picric acid, a notoriously unstable and poisonous chemical more powerful than its cousin, TNT, which was used to make shells, the Great War’s principle weapon.
When the Mont Blanc went off, it leveled a hugh swath of town. Along with the fatalities, around 9,000 people were injured. The mushroom cloud that rose over Halifax would be recognizable in a later day as something akin to a nuclear blast.
The Halifax Explosion was a massive disaster, striking in terms of loss of life, injuries, property damage, and human error. Yet, today, it is mostly forgotten, or at least unknown, possibly a result of it occurring at a time when millions had been killed in the trenches, and millions more were about to be killed by the flu.