It’s not often we get to report on breaking news here at That’s Terrible!, but a friend just told us that 5,000 gallons of molasses have spilled into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor!
It began around midnight on October 17 when a tank at Westway Feed Products began overflowing. The area reportedly smelled sugary as hot molasses spilled into the water. Cleanup efforts began within hours.
We know a little something about molasses spills. A few months ago, we spoke with Steve Guerriero from the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Mass. about the deadly molasses flood in Boston.
The Great Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919 when a storage tank failed at the Purity Distilling Company in Boston's North End. Millions of gallons of hot molasses went pouring into the streets, then cooled down and thickened, creating a sticky mess. The wave swept up people and animals and destroyed buildings, and the cooled, thick molasses took so long to clean up that for decades afterward, people said they could smell it on a hot day.
We’re happy to report that no people or animals seem to have been injured in the Baltimore incident, and we really hope this is the last time we’ll have breaking molasses news.