Jan. 15, 1919, was an unusually warm day for the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. Workers were busy with many city residents outside to enjoy the weather.
That’s when disaster struck around 1:00 p.m. The City of Boston in their commemorative piece said a loud rumble sound was heard, but Bostonians thought it was an elevated train nearby; it wasn’t.
A 50-foot tall tank full of 2.3 million gallons of molasses was rushing toward them at 35 miles per hour. Purity Distilling Company built the tank only four years prior.
Although fairly new, residents were aware of the tank leaking.
Purity, instead of addressing structural issues, decided to paint it brown to disguise the problem. Engineers said after the spill that the walls were too thin for that much molasses, around 26 million pounds. The walls of the tank were also vulnerable to cracking.
The Great Molasses Flood in Boston, 1919. pic.twitter.com/CTefc25V7m
— History Calendar (@historycalendar) July 15, 2025
According to the Smithsonian, one engineer in 2015 concluded the walls on tank needed to be twice as thick for that much product.
Jan. 15, 1919 was the perfect storm.
The weather, the amount of molasses in the tank that day, and the aforementioned structural issues caused the disaster which killed 21 people and injured 150. Two 10-year-olds were among the dead — Pasquale Iantosca and Maria Distasio.
The deceased were mostly workers and drivers, but also included a fireman who had just gotten to sleep in the firehouse before the flood hit.
The stickiness of the molasses made cleaning up debris incredibly hard.
Purity tried to shift blame, accusing anarchists of setting a bomb on the tank, but in 1925 a court-appointed auditor attributed the incident to negligence by U.S. Industrial Alcohol, the company who made the tank, reported the History Channel.
Per History, aerospace engineer Nicole Sharp became interested in the molasses flood after teaching a class at Harvard University where students created a scaled down replica of the event. They released corn syrup into a cardboard version of Boston and observed the effects.
“I watched as the corn syrup engulfed tiny figurines,” Sharp said. “It would be like having a tsunami wave hit you.”
What seems ridiculous and laughable at first read becomes a horror story when discovering the destruction and death wrought by the flood.
To think unassuming Bostonians, just weeks after enjoying Christmas with their families decided to venture out to work or to enjoy the weather only to find a catastrophe hit them.
The City of Boston added some good did come out the Great Molasses Flood.
Engineers would be required to sign and seal plans for structures with inspectors examining projects, and architects being required to be transparent when it came to their designs.
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