Today in History

Earlier this year, I started putting the date on the board at the beginning of each day but not including the correct year.  Initially, I was just choosing any random year of historical significance - 1666, 1492, 0, stuff like that.  Once I ran out of years that I knew everybody would know, I started looking online to see what had actually happened on the day's date in history.

I generally choose to use the History Channel's This Day in History site which offers up a nice selection under each of the headings of American revolution, automotive, Civil War, Cold War, crime, disaster, general interest, Hollywood, literary, music, Old West, presidential, sports, Vietnam War, WWI, and WWII.  Sometimes, though, nothing on the History Channel site catches my interest, and I wander onward to the NY Times's, InfoPlease, History.net, or (as a last resort) On This Day.com.  The most comprehensive list actually comes from the Today in History app (from Down Shift Interactive) on the iPad, but the History Channel offers the most details behind each of the events, so I like it best and use it the most.

Today the History Channel offered up a surfeit of riches of historical options in the neat but not hugely famous range.  On December 6, 1884, the Washington Monument's aluminum capstone was placed, finalizing a project that had taken almost fifty years to move from design to completion.  On December 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones killed the 1960s at Altamont.

But the coolest historical event of the day for me was the explosion of the Mont Blanc in Halifax harbor in 1917.  Check this description from the History Channel's website:

At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel.

As World War I raged in Europe, the port city of Halifax bustled with ships carrying troops, relief supplies, and munitions across the Atlantic Ocean. On the morning of December 6, the Norwegian vessel Imo left its mooring in Halifax harbor for New York City. At the same time, the French freighter Mont Blanc, its cargo hold packed with highly explosive munitions--2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of high-octane gasoline, and 10 tons of gun cotton--was forging through the harbor's narrows to join a military convoy that would escort it across the Atlantic.

At approximately 8:45 a.m., the two ships collided, setting the picric acid ablaze. The Mont Blanc was propelled toward the shore by its collision with the Imo, and the crew rapidly abandoned the ship, attempting without success to alert the harbor of the peril of the burning ship. Spectators gathered along the waterfront to witness the spectacle of the blazing ship, and minutes later it brushed by a harbor pier, setting it ablaze. The Halifax Fire Department responded quickly and was positioning its engine next to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc exploded at 9:05 a.m. in a blinding white flash.

The massive explosion killed more than 1,800 people, injured another 9,000--including blinding 200--and destroyed almost the entire north end of the city of Halifax, including more than 1,600 homes. The resulting shock wave shattered windows 50 miles away, and the sound of the explosion could be heard hundreds of miles away.

How awesome is that to read about?

I vaguelly remember reading about the explosion in a book that I had as a kid - something about the biggest disasters in history, gruesome book - but didn't know any of the details.

Chemistry & history - both very cool...

Feel free to read more over on the Wikipedia page or in a scholarly article trying to explore which explosion photos are real.