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The Denver Spider Man & The Great Molasses Flood
17 Plays1 year ago
On this week's episode, it’s two true life stories - one scary, spidery and one sad, “sappy!”
First, Lauren tells the story of “The Denver Spider Man” aka Theodore Edward Coneys - a terminally ill man who was told by doctors that he would not make it to his 18th birthday. Well he proved them wrong…but what horrifying lengths did he go to to survive in his twisted web of his life & lies?!
Next, Felicia explores one of the most wild true stories we've ever covered! On January 15, 1919, a giant storage tank filled with molasses burst, sending a tidal wave of molasses through the streets of Boston. The “Great Molasses Flood,” also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, resulted in a massive amount of damage, injuries, and even several deaths. The rumor is you can still smell molasses on hot days in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Molassachusetts!
If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out, follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Theme
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Lauren. I'm Felicia. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.
Phone Calls vs. Texting: A Therapeutic Discussion
00:00:21
Speaker
And we just had a really excellent front talk. We did. It was so nice. It was like a very Lauren and Felicia one. Lots of venting, lots of planning our futures. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes you forget like talk. I mean, we did talk on FaceTime, I guess, but talking on the phone is like
00:00:42
Speaker
so therapeutic. I forget to call friends. It's such a nice thing. It's the best thing in the world. It feels like a thing of the past sometimes, but we can do it now. Yeah. It's just so much better than getting a text message from somebody, too.
Review of the New Ant-Man Movie
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah. Especially Laura and I have such a personality. A text is not enough. You don't really get to see all of it. It's true. We act everything out, every story we act out. Big hand gestures, yelling. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
All caps only does so much for us. It's true. I want to say it's any of you voice messages too, but they're hard to listen to is the truth. I know. I know.
00:01:24
Speaker
They are. Anyways, do you have any recommendations? I do. So I did see the new Ant-Man movie, which I don't even really need to talk about because obviously, like, if you want to see a big Marvel movie, you're probably going to have seen it. It was, I will say, like weirder than other Marvel movies, which I appreciated. It has Catherine Newton from Freaky. Great. Oh, good. Yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
And then I do have to just briefly say Michelle Pfeiffer is in it a lot and obviously big fan. Couldn't have been a better gift to me than to have Michelle Pfeiffer in it a lot. And her plastic surgery is unbelievable. I'll have to send you a screenshot. What does she look like?
Aging and Cosmetic Procedures: Personal Takes
00:02:10
Speaker
She just, she looks like herself in the eighties. Like I've never seen it done so well. What? Oh, that's amazing. Yes.
00:02:19
Speaker
It's like, I feel like you have either option. Yeah. Oh no, I was gonna say you have either option, right? You get a bunch plus surgery and you like are trying to look young, but you don't really, or you like age beautifully and naturally. And it's like, she's done something in between. That's just amazing. That's amazing. That's what I want. Like I'm down to get a little Botox at a certain point, you know what I'm saying? But like, enough to talk. I know. I was like, should I start now?
00:02:46
Speaker
Honestly, I have this little crease between my eyebrows that after a very stressful day, I'll come home and I'm like, why isn't it disappearing? Why is it indented into my skin? And then I'll freak out and then I'll calm down by the next morning. But yeah. I feel the same way. I like come home at the end of the day and I'm like, my makeup is settling into my forehead creases because I am old.
Franchise Fatigue with Marvel
00:03:10
Speaker
No! It's terrible. And then I get over it. Yeah.
00:03:15
Speaker
That's good. I will tell you like, and it's probably like the lowest on my list of things that I would probably see, but that's just because that's not my. That's just not my thing, like. No, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. I feel like I'm in this like unfortunate.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's I went I went with Willow and James. But I'm like, I feel like I'm like sucked into Marvel now. Or I'm like, I feel like I have to watch them all to like complete it.
Shocking Content in 'The Boys'
00:03:45
Speaker
And I can't. It's too many things. Yeah. Because they've made so many. But ant man, like that sounds like it's so silly. It's so silly. It's so silly. Did you watch the boys? Sorry. No, I need to. The boys is great. There's one character that
00:04:03
Speaker
the characters can get really really small and there's a crazy sequence in which he's really small and goes into somebody's penis. What does he find? It's one of the most shocking episodes of television I've ever seen in my whole life. I will tell you that. Oh my god. I will tell you that. That sounds wild. The only other thing I wanted to recommend, I will watch The Voice though first, but I also wanted to recommend you, the new season of You, have you started?
Critique of 'You' Series
00:04:33
Speaker
I watched it all. Oh, I haven't finished it. So don't spoil anything. Okay, but what did you think? I didn't like it. I'm so sorry. Yeah, okay. No, it's terrible. Okay, I thought you're gonna say you liked it because you said recommendation. No.
00:04:50
Speaker
Well, I don't know. Watch it. I thought it was awful. If you want to know how bad it is,
Admiration for Mike Flanagan's Actress
00:04:56
Speaker
10 minutes before the end of the season, so I'm in the last episode, I pause it and I go to bed. I wake up the next morning and watch the last 10 minutes of the finals episode. That's how bored I was that I didn't even care. I know.
00:05:10
Speaker
I think I'm going to have to like go in and like read synopses of episodes because I don't want to actually go back and rewatch when I fell asleep. Yes. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, I've done it. I've done it. You do it. What you got to do. It's not that good. It's because it's like it's not the same format. No. And I think they thought they were like doing something different. And I'm like, but we liked the format. Yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker
I was like, what is this? Also, did the baby? What happened to the baby? Do you remember in the other season? He just like drops it at a neighbor's house, right? Oh, that's right. You're right. You're right. Like Harry Potter. Yes, I think that's right. Yes. He just doesn't give a poop anymore. So he just drops it.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, that was crazy. See, that season was great.
Binging 'The Mindy Project'
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah. I just miss our favorite girl from all the Mike Flanagan stuff. I love her so much. She's so talented. She's so like, just her face is so talented.
00:06:13
Speaker
She is such good face acting like Toni Collette. Yes. She's expressive. She's expressive. Yeah. Thank you. Recommendations for me. So I did binge all six seasons of the Mindy Project. You watched them all already? I'm so impressed.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's shocking. It does get worse and worse as the seasons go on, but I still enjoyed it pretty much. And I just couldn't stop. I think I also like, when I'm stressed, I feel like I like to like, like there's a lot of those episodes that I probably didn't fully watch, but I got the gist, you know? Like I had it on the background a lot, but I did watch all of that.
Movie Club: Black Directors & Films
00:07:01
Speaker
And then... Totally.
00:07:03
Speaker
Today I watched Blackula for 1972 because for my February Horror Movie Club one channel, we're doing movies with Black directors. And so we did Sweetheart last week, which is such... Have you ever seen that from 2019? Sweetheart? No. Oh my God. It's so great. You should watch it. It's like a deserted island.
00:07:28
Speaker
Like this girl gets stranded on an island and there's like a monster that comes out at night. Really good. That sounds great. Sweetheart. Sweetheart, yeah. I think it's on Netflix or Hulu, one of those. And then Blackula was
00:07:46
Speaker
surprisingly like just a really good movie it's definitely like it's so 70s it's truly hilarious but it's like you have this african prince who goes to the sky who okay he goes to dracula he goes to dracula to ask for help in stopping the slave trade and like the 1700s and then dracula bites him and then he
00:08:10
Speaker
is in a coffin until the 1970s in LA when he wakes up and now it's the 1970s and then he's blackula. And it's wild. It's such an enjoyable movie. There's definitely some things in it that make you cringe a little bit in a 2023 viewership way. Like there's some like homophobia. Yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
things like that but like overall I was like this is a great movie so that's a good one and yeah that's I think my recommendations I love that I never watched it but I definitely need to it feels like it was like monumental and historic right oh absolutely yeah yeah in terms of like
00:09:03
Speaker
black horror films. Absolutely. It's great. Let's do it. Definitely. Here we go. I'll add that to my list. Yeah. As you don't add Ant-Man to your list. I know. No. Yeah. The never ending lists that don't really exist, but you know. They do sometimes when I need something to watch. Sometimes I'm like, what did Felicia talk about? I feel like I just say that constantly where I'm like, I'll add it to the list and I have no list and I didn't add it and I'll probably forgot.
00:09:31
Speaker
So I was projecting. I'm sorry, Lauren. I was projecting.
The Denver Spider-Man: Theodore Kones Story
00:09:34
Speaker
No, you are fine. Okay. Shall I jump in? Yeah. Okay. So this week I am talking about the Denver Spider-Man. So back to Marvel.
00:09:50
Speaker
Oh, no. No, I'm just kidding. So this is about a man named Theodore Kones. And he was born November 10th, 1882 in Petersburg, Illinois. And his dad was a Canadian immigrant named Thomas H. Kones.
00:10:11
Speaker
And his wife was Isabella Elam. And basically, at some point, his mom moved Theodore to a farm near Wisconsin, and then they moved to Denver, Colorado in 1907. So his mom worked as a housekeeper at the Denver Democratic Club until she died in 1911. So I guess that was like, he was like in his 30s by then. So not like
00:10:39
Speaker
too, too tragic for him. But he is kind of a sad story. So he always his whole life suffered from poor health. He was told by doctors that he wasn't going to reach his 18th birthday. So he like kind of went on the track of like he dropped out of high school. He was kind of like, F it, I'm gonna die anyway. I would have done that. Honestly, I would have done that.
00:11:07
Speaker
I feel like I'm going to go live as much life as I can. Yeah. Feels like a waste. Right? If you're not going to live, I don't know. Like going to study hall. But he did not die. So he drops out of high school and then kind of like, you know, did sort of odd jobs. He worked as a bookkeeper for a while, but did spend most of his adult life homeless, which is pretty sad.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, so he was always, you know, kind of resentful. Yeah, probably should have stayed in school.
00:11:45
Speaker
But he was always sad about just like how people treated him because of his health conditions. He was super skinny, kind of weird looking. And when our story sort of really begins is September 1941. So Theodore at this time was 59 years old. He really, you know, outlived what the doctors said.
00:12:09
Speaker
But he went to his former acquaintance's home, whose name was Philip Peters, to ask for a handout. Philip wasn't home, so he broke into the house and he started to steal some food and money, and then kind of as he was looking around the house,
00:12:31
Speaker
he found in the ceiling of a closet, Theodore found this small trapdoor that led to this narrow attic area up there. He decided just to stay there without Philip's knowledge. That's crazy. Yes, this is one of
00:12:53
Speaker
one of those stories. So I'm looking up, I'm like looking at my, at my ceiling. I'm like, who's up there? Okay, go ahead. They freak me out so bad. Have you seen that video of like the woman in the cupboard? No, I am not. I yeah, I hate anything like this. There was like, yeah, there was this video circulating for a while this like little woman fitting up in the top of a pantry and climbing down
00:13:20
Speaker
Okay. I'll find it. I'll find it. It's horrifying. So he goes up into this attic. He decides to stay there. He lives in the house without anyone finding him for five weeks, which is pretty impressive. He must have been really quiet. Yes.
00:13:37
Speaker
Did he just sneak down and steal those snacks? So on October 7th, 1941, Philip Peters, the man who actually owned and lived in the house,
00:13:53
Speaker
found Theodore at the refrigerator. So he strikes Theodore with his cane, but Theodore had found an old pistol in the house and had it. And so he clubbed him to death. Yes. But he was in the house. He was the burglar. Yes. You should just leave. I think you should just leave. Just run away. Yeah. Take your cane beating and get out. Yep.
00:14:22
Speaker
But unfortunately, he keeps hitting him. Oh, actually, I just read the rest of my notes. So after the gun broke apart, Theodore continued hitting him with this heavy iron stove shaker. I guess I don't even really know what kind of utensil that is, but like kept hitting him. Who cares? I bet it's heavy and it hurts. Exactly. It's really sad. So Philip Peters was 73 years old at the time, died. Ugh.
00:14:50
Speaker
Theodore sneaks back up into the attic. So Philip Peters body was discovered by a neighbor later that day who was concerned that he was supposed to come over to her house for dinner and he hadn't. And so she kind of like rallied up some other neighbors and they all were trying to get into the house, but everything was locked up.
00:15:17
Speaker
And so they found a way to get in through one of the windows and the one neighbor went in and basically everyone else waited outside until they heard screaming because she had found Philip Peters body.
00:15:30
Speaker
So very sad and very sad how she found him. So he was half dressed, horribly beaten. He had more than 12 wounds in his skull. Super dark, sorry. So the neighbors. But you know what I will say. Yeah.
00:15:48
Speaker
It's that it only took a day for him to be found. Like in my head, I'm like, if I was 73 and like died alone in my house, my fear would be that nobody would find me for weeks. And so like the fact that he was like social enough and like had a friend to come check on him the same day. Like, thank God. I know. I'm like good for him having a social life. Yeah. Very impressive. So they all, the neighbors call the police, the police come and obviously like nobody can find any sign of forced entry.
00:16:18
Speaker
So even the chain on the front door is still chained up. And so they also find his wallet. They find cash. So they rule out any kind of robbery or someone breaking in. So they decide at some point that the murderer could still be in the house. And so they do this big search of the house.
00:16:41
Speaker
They do find the trapdoor, but looking up at it, they're like, no normal sized human could fit up it. So they don't examine it any further. Oh, man, they opened it and they just did it look. That's crazy. They just were like, oh, no one could fit up there anyway, because it's so small. So they leave it. They like basically the case runs cold.
00:17:04
Speaker
And kind of as, you know, as we're sort of moving along in our story after this murder, the neighbors are obviously very freaked out about this and are kind of, you know, keeping tabs on the house. People hear noises. There's even like, there was like a sighting of this man of like children were like walking by the house and said that they saw a face in the window. And so they call the police.
00:17:31
Speaker
The police search the entire house again, find no one again. And so now we're like, now there's like starting rumors of like maybe the house is haunted. Like maybe he died in this house and now his spirit is there, you know, freaky stuff going on. So I did not mean to make this a plot twist, but it is now. Philip was married. So Philip Peters, I know, sorry.
00:18:01
Speaker
So I thought you're gonna be like plot twist. It was a ghost. No, no, it's not a real plot twist. It's just I probably should have told you earlier. But Philip Peters had a wife, but she was in the hospital. So she was recovering from a broken hip in the hospital during and kind of before Theodore moved in. So that's like an added even more sad part is like she just like found out that her husband had been murdered in her house when she wasn't there.
00:18:32
Speaker
Oh my god. It's very sad. So she eventually moves back into the house. It's her house. You know, she owns it. I could not. I would not. No. I don't know what I would do. Get an apartment. Yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker
But she moves back into the house. This is like amongst the neighbors saying it's haunted and hearing strange noises. So she is kind of like a housekeeper nurse that returns to the house with her. And both of them would hear strange noises in the night.
00:19:05
Speaker
And there is one night that the housekeeper woman hears a noise, gets up out of bed, walks out of her room, and then sees a dirty man on the back stairs. But, excuse me, I just burped. That's disgusting. It's okay. Go ahead. It's okay. It's so shocking. It's so shocking. It's upsetting. But when she walks up to the man, this is the most disturbing part. When she walks up to the man,
00:19:34
Speaker
He starts chattering his teeth at her. What does that mean? I don't even know how you can do that. Like fast? Like fast or slow? I think fast. I think fast. Fast teeth chattering. He was trying to show you what chattering looked like. He's scratching the microphone. He's like, stop recording. He said the story is too scary.
00:20:05
Speaker
Too scary for little boys. So he's chattering his teeth. That reaction was so freaky and the whole experience was so freaky that she just calls the police and leaves the house as quickly as possible, convinced that it's haunted. Convinced that it wasn't a real man. And left the lady in there. Yes, which I do find upsetting. A little rude, but okay.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, honestly a bad friend, but another neighbor offers to come stay in the house with her. And then again, several nights later, the neighbor hears something rattling around in the kitchen. And so she is so brave, apparently, that she goes to the kitchen without turning on any lights. And she says that she saw a filthy wraith-like thing and that it vanished when she screamed.
00:21:01
Speaker
What is Wraith like? Like skinny? I think like skinny. Yeah, like a ghoul.
00:21:06
Speaker
Okay. Like a ghoul. So this was enough. This was enough now that Mrs. Peters decided to move. So she moves to Western Colorado to live with her son. And basically like other neighbors are sort of keeping track of the house, still seeing lights going on and off. There was even like one neighbor that eventually like goes over and knocks on the door with a baseball bat and then gets scared and runs away.
00:21:37
Speaker
So Theodore remained in the house without anybody knowing he was there with everything kind of blamed on ghosts or local pranksters. And the police did continue to just make routine checks because of this, like people were calling the police, they'd come check the house. But finally on July 30th,
00:22:02
Speaker
1941. So just to give you some context, basically he moved in in September of 1941, killed Philip in October 1941. So he'd almost been there for a whole year. So at this time they finally see something.
00:22:23
Speaker
So the mailman comes by and right at that time, so basically like police were outside, the mailman also came by and right at that time the curtains opened and a face looked out. So the first cop sees it, nudges the second cop, so they both saw the curtains together.
00:22:44
Speaker
And they basically decide to just go into the house, check everything out. And so when they open the door, they immediately smell a terrible odor, which is just really gross. Then they are like hearing noises. And so they go upstairs and perfectly time it that they see Theodore's legs going up the trap door. Oh, that's such a horror movie image.
00:23:13
Speaker
That's so scary. It's so, it's so scary. So they grab him, they pull him down and basically discover that, you know, he had been living up in this attic. There was a single light bulb. His bed was an ironing board and there was like some amount of bedding. And then they say magazines, which I'm just assuming has to be like porn magazines or something disturbing up there. I mean, also, yeah, I guess wouldn't you do all day up there for a year? I don't know.
00:23:43
Speaker
just sit there, but he, like the space smelled so bad because he had been pooping and peeing up there as well. Ew! Why did he just go down to the toilet? He's pretty nasty. He's pretty nasty. I feel like at that point, like once everybody had moved out, then you should definitely be, be flushing that toilet. Yes, yes, please.
00:24:06
Speaker
So the police took him into custody and they actually had to take him to the hospital first because he was so skinny and frail and not doing well.
00:24:16
Speaker
So once the hospital released him to the police, he confessed to the crimes. And that Denver Spider-Man name actually came from local newspapers. So the police detective, Fred Zarno, remarked after finding everything that a man would have to be a spider to stand it long up there, hence giving him the name Denver Spider-Man.
00:24:43
Speaker
I think it's actually Denver Spider-Man of Moncrief Place is his full name, his full nickname. So he was tried and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Colorado State Penitentiary, and he was there until he died on May 16, 1967.
00:25:03
Speaker
So it's sort of a sad, sad tale, but very freaky. I mean, he honestly lived to be like, I think close to 80 years old. So he did really like outlive his, you're going to die before you're 18. But obviously just so sad that he murdered that man.
00:25:22
Speaker
It's so crazy because I just watched an X-Files episode and this is from one of the early seasons about this guy that can like get into all the really tiny spaces. Do you know that one? No, I don't know that I've seen it. I can't remember what season it's in. But I just I scored at the thrift store recently and found like three box sets of X-Files VHSs.
00:25:45
Speaker
It was a big score. I love that. But one of the episodes, yeah, it's this guy that can just shrink his body down to get in these really tight spaces. So he's in the walls of houses and stuff. But he eats people's livers. Ew. But I'm curious. I know a lot of their episodes are based on stuff. So I wonder if that's based on this story. But I don't know.
00:26:14
Speaker
Sorry, Toby. Honestly, it could be and no, I loved it.
The Boston Molasses Flood: A Sticky Disaster
00:26:19
Speaker
And I will say too, they do cover him on my favorite murder if you want to listen to that episode as well. But I just think it's such a freaky case and I hate the idea of people living in the walls or in your attic or anything like that. Uh, yeah, me too. It's my nightmare. Especially because it's something that you feel like could never happen. The fact that it has happened at least more than once is very scary.
00:26:45
Speaker
That was a freaky story. Thank you. Okay. All right. Shall I go do it?
00:27:05
Speaker
So, I guess what our topics have in common this week is that we are both inspired by my favorite murder podcast episode. There's our tie. Yes. Or it's that both of our topics had already been covered by my favorite murder, so we both used it in our research. Yeah. So, today I'm talking about the Boston molasses flood.
00:27:33
Speaker
This is a crazy, crazy, crazy story. Because in one idea, if you think of it as a cartoon, it seems funny. And then when you hear what actually happens during a flood of molasses, it's so dark, scary, horrifying.
00:27:57
Speaker
that it just, you know, the contrast is like I can see this being a Mickey Mouse episode. And at the same time, it's like people are. Yes. So I don't know. But let's let's go in. Oh, gosh. So this is this happened in Boston in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, January 15, 1919. And the basics of what happened is that a large container
00:28:25
Speaker
of over 2 million gallons of molasses, which was being used to mostly produce rum alcohol, different alcohols, burst and exploded waves of sticky syrup into the factory, out into the streets and flooded the whole area with molasses. Oh, my God. Yeah, I was like, I'm waiting for your gas.
00:28:54
Speaker
Oh, just sticky goo over everything. Like basically, like what looks like what I think about like tar and like a tar and feather situation. Or surf, but worse, much worse. Yeah. Okay, so the wave molasses was estimated to have been 25 feet high. Which is like
00:29:19
Speaker
three six foot men on top of each other. Plus a foot. Math. Oh my God. And it traveled at 35 miles per hour, which really feels too fast for molasses because people say slow is molasses. And in my head, that means being like slow. But 35 miles per hour, that is some fast molasses. I'm just saying. That is very fast. Yeah, too fast.
00:29:47
Speaker
the disaster and I'll explain like what happened or how it happened in a minute but the overall destruction so injured about 150 people killed 21 people including at least two children and this is I know it's always strange how our minds feel about animals I know I know it's so bad and not molasses oh god
00:30:13
Speaker
But we always feel worse about animals for some reason, because they didn't build the machine. I'm sorry. But all these horses died. So this is a time in which horses were obviously a large portion of the transportation in Boston. And so there was just tons and tons of horses that were killed. It is horrifying.
00:30:38
Speaker
And then of course it also caused- And they couldn't outrun it. They couldn't outrun- Oh my God, stop. I'll start crying. I will cry right now. I'll freaking do it.
00:30:47
Speaker
Black Beauty. No! Oh, God. That's so sad. Yeah. But also, obviously, in addition to lives of human animals lost, there was damage to all the buildings in the area, lots of homes and businesses destroyed completely or heavily damaged. And there was all these rescue efforts that started
00:31:13
Speaker
pretty immediately but because it was I mean it's just such a shocking thing like nobody knew how to deal with the molasses or how to begin like rescue efforts with this sticky like thick liquid
00:31:33
Speaker
And so it's it was literally like very difficult to move in or through. Like in a flood, like you're like boat or something like raft. But this it's like it's so sticky. It was like so hard to get from one area to another. Just because of just because it was sticky and thick and gross. But yeah, I mean, talk about unprecedented. I know. Yeah, exactly. Situation. Yeah. And by the I mean, and we'll
00:32:03
Speaker
gets this later, but it also has some... What's the word? I'm thinking of ramifications in our legal system. Yeah. Is that right? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Big word. So yeah, but we'll get to that in a hot second. But yeah, so it was really difficult to move through. Very hard to find victims.
00:32:23
Speaker
There was a story about one guy that was like in his house. And the molasses like, can't can't can't keep straight into the house to the point where he was like, Oh, God and climbed on top of like his bed frame to like float above it.
00:32:39
Speaker
And it's such an insane thing to even like picture because if you think of it like a flood, it makes sense. But then you start to think of it as like sticky molasses and it's like does not compute visually. And most of the photos that you can find of this are of the aftermath. So it's not like you really see pictures and it's also like 1919.
00:33:03
Speaker
So it's not like we're necessarily seeing pictures of like, it as it's happening. But yeah, just very, very bad. Oh, yeah. So, okay, the reason for the tanks failure, I mean, there was so of course, as soon as this happened, there was like a million lawsuits from families from the government from everyone to try to like, find someone to blame, right? When something so horrible like this happens. Yeah, like,
00:33:32
Speaker
you need someone to blame. And it seems like what they basically figured out is that it was a combination of different factors. So one, they had used a low quality steel in its construction. It had not been properly maintained over time. And it had been an unseasonably warm out, which had caused the molasses to ferment
00:34:02
Speaker
and also in create gas and molasses is supposed to ferment. I think that's how like that's used to turn into rum. And just like a side note that that is interesting. So you also if you think about the time period, this is in prohibition was going to start in 1920.
00:34:21
Speaker
So prohibition in the United States, basically, if you're not from here, is a law that said you cannot produce, import, transport, or sell any alcoholic beverages in the United States of America.
00:34:36
Speaker
And this went from 1920 to 1933. And it's funny, like thinking about that even being a thing now is so insane, especially with the amount of my friends that are bartenders. Yeah, truly. Yeah. And so it's like it was an entire industry that was about to be shut down and people knew it was coming. It wasn't like a night and day thing. So people people knew it was coming. And so they believed that this plant was trying to like produce
00:35:06
Speaker
as much of this molasses for rum as humanly possible to make as much before the law went into effect where they could no longer produce it. Wow. Yeah, so very interesting. And I also, yeah, I just realized I never said the company. So the disaster happened at the purity distilling company facility, which was at 529 commercial streets in the north end of Boston.
00:35:35
Speaker
So yeah, so it's January 15th. So we are in the middle of winter, but I mentioned the temperature a minute ago. So they have been expecting very low temperatures and it had gotten above 40 degrees, which this year, because of global warming, is very normal, I will say.
00:35:55
Speaker
Like even today in Brooklyn like it's February 20th We have not we've not had any snow here except for like one flurry and the temperature right now is 61 degrees and February 61 Like global warming is out of control. It's out of control But anyway, so but at this time About 40 degrees not what they had expected And so the tank was just like not
00:36:23
Speaker
the temperatures were not correctly put for the tank to be in that kind of weather at this time of year. And by the way, so when it finally did kind of go,
00:36:37
Speaker
people said that it sounded like a train passing. So there was an elevated train in Boston that made a lot of noise. Like I think about like the subway here when it's above ground, it's like earth shattering how loud it is. And so a lot of people at first thought they just heard this train and then like a big bang, if you will. And then they said it sounded like a machine gun because all of these
00:37:05
Speaker
So the fasteners, they're called rivets, but the little bolts that you see in the side of something metal, it's because those were shooting out of the tank, hitting the wall at machine gun level speed. Do you even just imagine standing there? Oh my god. It's like all is lost. This is the end. It's all over now. And turns. Yes. So insane.
00:37:34
Speaker
Oh, so yeah, it was very, very bad. And it took I don't even know. I thought I had this information, but I don't remember, but it took forever to clean up, basically. I'm sure all these different ways to clean it. And that was the other thing. They had never tried to clean up a mess like this. I'm sure it's like similar, like the first oil spill. It's like, OK, how did we get this stuff out of here? Because initially they had just tried using water from like the fire hydrants, but it would not move it.
00:38:04
Speaker
And then they're trying to like shovel it. They try other stuff. It's like they couldn't they couldn't figure out a cleanup method until one guy was like, Oh, let's try using salt water out of the like harbor. And so they did that. And somehow that was able to like
00:38:21
Speaker
push the molasses out and then I'm pretty sure they just put it in the ocean which is probably not what they would have done today, but Fish full of molasses. They all got very tubby anyways, so Yeah, so it took it took weeks to clean up the area hundreds of people and That so this is just a funny image but all the crew
00:38:51
Speaker
they have been working with the molasses and covered in the molasses on their shoes. And so they also like tracked the molasses all over Boston to their homes, to the subway, to whatever the streets everywhere. So all of Boston was just sticky. It was reported, this is a quote, that everything that a Bostonian touched was sticky.
00:39:22
Speaker
Oh my god. And this is the thing. It's like people die, but it's also like it feels like a Mickey Mouse cartoon. It's so crazy. Okay, and then like to come around to the some, you know, good that that can but I guess is all these lawsuits that I mentioned.
00:39:39
Speaker
They ended up basically saying that it was the fault of the company for not properly building their tanks. And so it started kind of the first bit of government control over private businesses.
00:39:57
Speaker
an infrastructure where things had to start being approved by the government to be built. And the government had to have like records of who had built things and how. So because this stuff didn't exist. So it's like when a disaster like this happened, it's like who was to blame, like who built the tank? And it's like the government didn't even have that information because there was no legal reason for the company to report it to them previously.
00:40:28
Speaker
So yeah, and so that's that basically has started that started like, what is now very normal, which is even if you walk down like my street right now, it's like to have construction on a something here, you have to have a work permit from the government.
00:40:44
Speaker
they have to know what you're planning to do. And you have to follow all these guidelines and whatever. And also having corporate or private companies being liable for public disasters. So in some ways, I'm like, it's not that which is good. But yeah, but these things are important. I think because companies need to be responsible for the chaos and that they that they create
00:41:14
Speaker
And because I think we even have problems with that today with gas companies that sometimes they're not held as accountable because they have so much money, which is a whole nother deep dive, but yeah. So yeah, that is the Boston Molasses Flood. It was freaking crazy town. The horse thing really made me sad and yeah, very sticky.
00:41:39
Speaker
The cleanup, I just can't imagine. It is mostly just so sad that all those people died, but then I'm just like, I am sure they were finding molasses in things that they had no idea for years to come. They also have said still to this day, if it's a hot day in Boston, you can still smell the molasses, which is unclear if that's actually true, but apparently you really could for a long time.
00:42:03
Speaker
That is disgusting. And also I believe it. Yeah, I totally believe it. It also makes me think about like Toby, like, like Toby peed on this rug recently, which is not normal behavior for him. So I was, we were mostly just sad about it as a family. I was like, Toby, this is so unlike you.
00:42:17
Speaker
But anyways, so he peed and like, how hard is for me to get a small dot of P out of my rug to get like, oh, did I even tell you this two million gallons of molasses out of Boston? Oh my God. I don't think I ever said that number. Two million gallons. I hope you're still listening, dear viewers or dear listeners. Two million gallons.
00:42:42
Speaker
It's freaking crazy. That is horrifying. That's so much. That's too much. That's too much molasses. Okay. That's it. Well, I'm horrified and delighted. Thank you for sharing that crazy story. Anytime. Anytime. And for everyone else. Oh, appropriate. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Ooh, molasses nightmares. Yes. Bye. Where you're just drowning in molasses. Okay. Okay. Bye.