Happy 107th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion! 💥(the largest human-made explosion until the atomic bomb)

Background: A heavily laden munitions ship on its way to the battlefields of WWI caught fire and exploded, devastating an entire section of the city, killing at least 1,600 people.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

Here's a graphic to give you an idea of the scale comared to the 2020 Beirut blast which looked like this.

There were also upwards of 9,000 non-fatal injuries, many of them from shards of window glass that were blown inwards from the force of the blast, including one guy who I met when I was a youngster. He'd been about my age when he was watching the ship burn, and would have lost both eyes had his mother not called out to him the moment before the explosion, causing him to turn away from the window.

The city was utterly devastated in the aftermath, but aid from outside the region rushed in, notably from the people of Boston, which with Halifax already a long history of mutual friendship (despite being natural rivals). To this day we send Boston a Christmas tree every year in thanks, and is why I have such a soft spot for @Landlord_Messiah, even though he probably hates me. (❤ you, buddy....)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston%E2%80%93Halifax_relations

A few years ago they named a ferry after the train dispatcher in the video who remained at his station to send the distress call to the passenger train, which is also pretty fitting.