6 December 1917: The Halifax Explosion
The Halifax Explosion occurred on December 6, 1917, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, when a French munitions ship, the Mont-Blanc, collided with a Norwegian ship, the Imo, headed for wartime Belgium. The Mont-Blanc caught fire and then exploded, killing 2,000 people and injuring thousands more. The explosion caused a tsunami, and a pressure wave of air so powerful that it snapped trees, bent iron rails, and demolished buildings, carrying the fragments of them for hundreds of metres.
This was the largest man-made explosion until the first atomic bomb test explosion in 1945 and still ranks highly among the largest ever man-made, non-nuclear explosions.
posted by Fergie @ 12/07/2005 08:23:00 AM
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