Re: (rshsdepot) Hell's Gate

["JIMBEAR" <ribear_@_cox.net>]

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "fred fep" <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>
To: "Henry Rosenberg" <hwr5_@_columbia.edu>
Cc: "Les & Phyllis" <lesphyl_@_earthlink.net>; "Rick Pinard" <PinardR@rferl.org>; "Jamie" <nyclincoln@aol.com>; "RSHS
Depot" <rshsdepot_@_lists.railfan.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 12:33 AM
Subject: (rshsdepot) Hell's Gate


> The explosion was the largest ever until Hiroshima.
>
>
> Association guided ships through the passage. In the 1870s the reefs
> were blasted; supposedly the explosion was heard as far away as Newark.
>
> ...from http://www.astorialic.org/topics/names.htm

Someone at the Astoria Historical Society need to do a better job of checking
their facts. The greatest explosion in history before the first atomic bomb occurred
at Halifax, NS during WWI. A French munitions ship, the Mont Blanc, loaded
with nearly 200 tons of TNT, 10 tons, of gun cotton, 35 tons of benzol, and 2,300
tons of picric acid (used in manufacturing gunpowder) collided with another ship in
the channel and caught fire. It exploded 20 minutes later. The resulting explosion
completely obliterated the 320 foot long, 3,000 ton ship (one of its anchors was
found two miles away)  and killed more than 1,900 people eventually died as a
result of the explosion in Halifax that day. During the development of the atomic
bomb. Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists used the Halifax destruction
to calculate the effects of the atomic bomb.

BTW, the French crew abandoned the ship and left it adrift. It came to rest
against the railroad pier. The station master sent a last telegraph message seconds
before the explosion, describing the peril and saying goodbye.

Jim.



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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #579
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org