Bostonians this morning lined the perimeter of the Purity Distilling Co.'s leaky, 50-foot-tall molasses tank, which burst around 12:40 p.m. on Jan. 15, 1919, creating a gooey flood that killed 21 Bostonians and a number of horses and destroyed buildings in its path. Read more.

No, not the sweet smell that would rise every summer from the North End. Pacific Standard explains how the disaster on Jan. 15, 1919 led to dramatic changes in the way cities and states regulate construction projects to reduce the odds of shoddy work leading to catastrophe (we saw a similar thing after the Cocoanut Grove with fire-safety regulations).

Events marking the 100th anniversary of the Flood.

Stephen Puleo, who literally wrote the book about the 1919 Great Molasses Flood (Dark Tide), will give a talk on the deadly, brown, gooey tsunami at the BPL on Jan. 15 - 100 years to the day after a shoddy, 50-foot-tall molasses tank on Commercial Street in the North End exploded, sending a deep river of warm molasses along the waterfront at 35 m.p.h., killing 21 people and several horses, demolishing a fire house and warping the elevated tracks that then ran above the street. Read more.

Associated Press reports Harvard scientists who study fluid dynamics turned their eye to the Great Molasses Flood and, after studying how molasses flows at different temperatures, concluded that the relatively warm molasses that flowed out of that North End tank quickly cooled in the relatively chill Boston air (the disaster happened during one of our January thaws), going from liquidy to gooey and trapping people and horses.

Earlier:
Also: Molasses is a non-Newtonian fluid.
Up to their knees in molasses, looking for victims.

Around 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 15, 1919, a large, poorly maintained tank full of molasses on a warm day burst, sending a huge wave of gooey death rampaging down Commercial Street, drowning or crushing 21 people and several horses and cats as it battered the supports of the el that ran down the street and knocked a neighboring fire station off its foundation.

As with so many other major events in the early and mid-20th century, Leslie Jones was there to chronicle the aftermath.

Scientific American breaks it down for us, explains why the nature of molasses made the flood far worse than if it had just been some rogue wave tearing through the inner harbor:

On an unseasonably warm January 15, 1919, a 50-foot-high storage tank of molasses - meant to be turned into rum in the rush before Prohibition - burst on Commercial Street in the North End, creating a giant wave of sticky brown death that destroyed buildings, bent the el and killed 21 people.

Steven Puleo, who wrote the book on the Great Molasses Flood, which happened 90 years ago today, explains what it's like to write a book about something like that:

At first, the woman in front of me jumped a bit when I popped my head over the seatback and said, "Would you like me to autograph that?"

We had just taken off from Charlotte, on a connector flight from Boston to Hilton Head, and her movement had caught my eye when she pulled a copy of Dark Tide from her bag and settled in to read. When I asked the question, she glanced quickly from me to the book and back to me again, and said, "No – you're not…are you?" But there's no author's photo on the paperback, after all, so she wasn't entirely sure. ...