At midday, a 40-foot wave of fiery hot molasses flooded the streets of Boston on January 15, 1919, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others.
A 58-foot high tank filled with 2.5 million gallons of crude molasses burst under pressure due unseasonably hot weather at the U.S. Industrial Alcohol Company plant in the north end of the city.
The flood crushed buildings, moved a firehouse, and knocked an elevated train off its tracks.
Clint Eastwood gained fame as an iconic actor in such classic Western films as A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967) and as Detective Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry franchise beginning in 1971. He later became a renowned director, receiving the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).
In Johnstown, PA. on this day in 1889, more than 2,200 people died after the South Fork Dam collapsed.
Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel on this day in 1962. He was a Gestapo official and was executed for his actions in Nazi Germany’s Holocaust.
In North Carolina on this day in 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph was captured. He had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for five years for several bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing.
Eric Robert Rudolph will be 52 years old on September 19.
Walter "Walt" Whitman(May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)
American poet Walt Whitman is best known for his collections Leaves of Grass and Drum-Taps. His 1865 poem "O Captain! My Captain!" was written on the occasion of the death of Abraham Lincoln. Whitman dropped out of school at the age of eleven and, to support his family, working as a law office assistant and a newspaper apprentice.
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is 88 years old today.
Clint Eastwood gained fame as an iconic actor in such classic Western films as A Fistful of Dollars (1967) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967) and as Detective Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry franchise beginning in 1971. He later became a renowned director, receiving the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Unforgiven(1991) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). He also directed the critically acclaimed films Mystic River (2003), Gran Torino (2009) and American Sniper (2014).
Clint Eastwood became a household name after playing Rowdy Yates on the long-running CBS Western series Rawhide.
Vanport was dramatically destroyed at 4:05 p.m. on May 30, 1948, when a 200-foot section of the dike holding back the Columbia River collapsed during a flood, killing 15. The city was underwater by nightfall leaving its inhabitants homeless.
Vanport, sometimes referred to as Vanport City or Kaiserville, was built as a city for wartime public housing in Multnomah County, Oregon between the Portland city boundary and the Columbia River. It is currently the site of Delta Park and the Portland International Raceway. Vanport construction began in August 1942 to house the workers at the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in Portland and Vancouver, Washington. The Vanport name was a blending of "Vancouver" and "Portland". The city home to 40,000 people, about 40 percent of them African-American, making it Oregon’s second-largest city at the time, and the largest public housing project in the nation.