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Post by lizmc on Dec 6, 2015 22:33:36 GMT
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Post by shangas on Dec 7, 2015 11:18:42 GMT
There's a movie about this event called "Shattered City". It's pretty friggin' intense.
The TL;DR version:
Two ships crashed in Halifax Harbour. One of them was transporting munitions and explosives to the Western Front during WWI. The ships pulled apart. The sparks set the munitions on fire. The munitions ship attempted to scuttle itself. The munitions on board caught fire and started to explode. No warning flag was run up the mast, so people started checkin' this thing out like it was fireworks.
Then the main store of ammunition and explosives inside the holds went off.
In a matter of seconds, the entire city of Halifax was leveled.
To this day, the Halifax Explosion is THE largest non-nuclear explosion in history.
You bet that took some doing.
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Post by lizmc on Dec 7, 2015 12:00:35 GMT
Not quite all of the City was levelled.....the Citadel blocked some of the force, protecting the neighbourhoods behind it....to this day, you can see the marks in the Citadel wall from debris that hit it....an anchor shaft from the Mont Blanc was found 5 km inland (and is still there).....the Mont Blanc never should have been in Halifax Harbour in the first place, but it was behind schedule, the convoy it was to join was full, and it was deemed too slow, so it entered the Harbour to wait for the next convoy to form.
The first aid came from the City of Boston, and every year since Halifax has sent a large Xmas tree to Boston.....
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Post by lizmc on Dec 6, 2016 14:16:20 GMT
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