In the news

The 1947 Texas City disaster sounds ridiculous. Took out a big chunk of the city but some people who were as close as 70 feet from the detonation managed to survive. All but one firecrew (of the entire city) perished.

That what I was reading, especially how the ship boiled the sea due to the high temperatures, and the propeller found further in-land.

"Hey, I'm Donald Trump. I'll try to squash the Iranians without any idea of power balancing in the Middle East because you know what, The Apprentice got renewed for another season. Let's hear it for American vets! Obama sucks, huh?"

"I'm rich so I know turning down 213mil so I can push laws that will help other money making I have going is a smart move, here is a list of things an expensive team told me you care about enough to cheer for and vote blindly for anyone who says them"

"You know, I'm going to talk about how much you hate something that you feel really strongly about, and how I agree with you and how I'd do it differently by really making tough decisions, like for example - I mean, let's hear it for American vets! Obama sucks, huh?"

"the bible, nothing beats the bible... I hope I win, that one hurt me inside"

We have Pride Week in Copenhagen atm, culminating in the Pride March through town today. The Defence Academy is marching, since they "have a unique obligation to show diversity". I love the Pride, but I think I love the fact that the leader of the Defence Academy, who gave that statement, is Rear Admiral Christian Wang more. But I also like fart jokes...

Rear Admiral Christian Wang.

Sounds like a band name.

You should read up on the Halifax explosion. While it wasn't an industrial accident - more a military one as it happened during the First World War and involved a shipment of explosives it was in many ways very similar (including roughly the same explosive yield).

Except that in Halifax the explosion vaporized so much water the harbour floor was briefly exposed, causing an 18 metre high tsunami as water rushed in to take its place. The main gun of the Mont-Blanc, the ship involved, was found three and a half miles away and the shank of its anchor (weighing half a tonne) two miles away. It's hard to get your head around the scale of it...

It's hard to get your head around the scale of it...

That putting it mildly.

It's one of those incident you really want to see what happen at the same time do not wish this scale of destruction on people.

Jeezus

That is amazing.

Holy shit!!! That definitely show what @Fox trying to describe the huge scale of the explosion.

The containers scattered around like bits of Lego are pretty intense... Very frightening aftermath, no one seems to know, or is saying, exactly what exploded and how toxic it may be... Chinese are closing down websites left, right and center trying to muzzle the story... It's a tragedy...

I do find the low death count deeply surprising.

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

It's at 112 now and has kept going up. It is likely to keep going up unfortunately, there are areas near the centre of the blast I don't think they've even investigated properly yet. A fire has broken out again at the blast site, the local army chief of staff has confirmed that there was 100 tonnes of sodium cyanide stored there, and we already know that there was calcium carbide, sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate in large quantities but because of damage to the office buildings, poor record keeping and and major "customs discrepancies" the authorities don't know what else. So the answer to TS's question is very toxic, it's just a question of what effect that has...

Nuts.

It reminds me of a story I listened to a while back about "milking" sexual assaults. Where women drugged or subdued men and forcibly collected their semen. The logic being semen extracted unwillingly was more potent for spells.

That is quite a toxic soup...

In other news, pretty glad I got my UK passport before I left... Not that I'm ever coming back for good, but, y'know...

My great aunt lost an eye in the explosion (so got off relatively lightly, but...). It was pretty horrific from all my relatives accounts.

https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/halifax-explosion

One of the biggest explosions was in Staffordshire in during WW2, the crater is pretty large

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fauld_explosion

the cause of the explosion was probably a site worker removing a detonator from a live bomb using a brass chisel rather than a wooden batten.

oops

@Aroogah has relatives who were injured in it too. I guess with 9000 people injured that's not that surprising but is a good reminder of the scale of it. Bit grim but apparently hundreds of people were blinded because they were watching the fire stood next to windows and when the explosion happened the windows were blown in. I guess the lesson is if you're ever near a big fire which might result in an explosion get the fuck away from the window.

Actually - mine were here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Refinery_explosion

My ancestor who came to Texas had a brother who moved to Nova Scotia/Newfoundland and founded a not insignificant dynasty. It's entirely possible that I sit in a small overlap in the venn diagram of those tragedies.

tl;dr - keep me away from industrial ports. k. thx. bye.