The source of what is known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, the Great Molasses Flood, or the Boston Molasses Disaster was a 50-foot steel tank located on Boston's North End commercial street. for the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which was receiving regular shipments of molasses from the Caribbean and was using it to produce alcohol and to make liquor.

The company established the tank in 1915 when the demand for industrial alcohol increased after the First World War, but the construction process was accelerated and the construction took place very randomly. The tank nearly corroded and honey or molasses began to seep into the street, and an employee warned the company that the tank was structurally unsound.

But the company did little, and by 1919 the Italian and Irish immigrant families on the commercial street were accustomed to hearing the roar and squeak of metal emanating from the tank. On the afternoon of January 15, 1919, temperatures were unusually mild in the Boston winter.

The commercial street cracked with the sound of workers the sound of a clopping horse, and a raised train car nearby, and at fire station 31 a group of men were eating their food while playing cards, and near the molasses tank were eight-year-old Antonio de Stasio, his sister Maria, and another boy named Pascual Iantosca collecting firewood for their families, and in his family home the barman Martin Klugerti was still in his bed.

Around 12:40 p.m., the afternoon calm was broken by a metallic roar, and before the residents had time to record what was happening, a recently refilled tank of molasses opened wide and unleashed 23 million gallons of honey. (Scream of mash some say is molasses wave.), a 15-foot-tall syrup wall flows down Commercial Street at a rate of 35 miles per hour, wiping out people, buildings, horses and electric poles in its path, the Boston Post later said.

Then the children immediately swallowed and choked on the molasses, but Antonio lived with a head injury after he was moved to another location, Martin Clogerti saw his house collapse around him, he says after the accident I was on the third floor of my house when I heard a big squeaking sound and when I woke up, molasses was around me, He took the makeshift boat to save his sister but his mother and younger brother were killed.

After a while the molasses wave receded and the ruined buildings and ruins appeared, police and firefighters arrived at the scene of the disaster within minutes and US Navy ships arrived. Rescue workers examined the rubble and put the death toll at about 21 dead and 150 wounded.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the victims filed a lawsuit against the company, but the company offered a different explanation for what happened to the tank and that the flooding occurred as a result of sabotage by Italian anarchist groups. Judicial advocacy for about five years, until 1925 AD.

Where state auditor Hugh W. Ogden decided that molasses was the cause of the disaster and concluded poor company planning, neglect and lack of supervision of the building structure, the company paid the victims an amount of $ 628,000 in compensation, which is equivalent to today $ 8 million, and by the time the settlement was made and the area recovered from what It was resolved and businessmen donated to clear the wreckage, but the scent of molasses lingered in the area for several weeks and the waters of Boston Harbor turned brown into the summer.