December 6, 1917 –
On the morning of December 6, the munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded in Halifax harbor after being struck by another ship, the Norwegian ship Imo.
It is the largest explosion before the atomic age. The ship was carrying 200 tons of TNT, 61 tons of gun cotton, 35 tons of Benzyl, and 2,300 tons of picric acid; the explosion destroys 325 acres of the city, leaving 1,900 people dead and injuring over 9,000.
A nicer remembrance of the days tragic events is the official Boston Christmas tree lighting, which sits in Boston Common, which occurred Thursday night. The tree is a gift from the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has been sent every year since the 1970s. It is in recognition of the swift and sustained relief effort the people of Boston put together to aid Halifax after the explosion. (Nova Scotia doesn’t complain anymore about the cost of their very generous gift – after all told the tree ends up costing the Nova Scotian government more than a quarter million dollars. The amount of positive international press Nova Scotia garners for its very magnanimous gift is priceless.)
And so it goes
The Haus of Dcaligari 