Before the atomic bomb, the largest man-made explosion
Halifax is an important large port in Canada, which consists of Belfort Bay and a slender strait.
During World War I, the largest explosion before an atomic bomb experiment took place. More than 2,000 people were killed, more than 9,000 were injured, and the entire city was reduced to rubble.
In World War I, the United States sent a lot of arms to Europe, and there were more ships in ports than electric vehicles today.
On December 5, 1917, an ambulance ship in the port, the Imo, planned to load military rations on this day and transport them to Belgium, where the soldiers basically had to eat mud, and the task was 100,000 urgent.
Because they were afraid of German submarines attacking the port at night, the port would pull the anti-submarine net at night, and all ships could not enter or exit. The Imo was loaded too late and had to wait until the next morning to depart.
Another ship from New York to the European battlefield, the Mont Blanc, was going to come here to resupply, but they came too late and could only spend the night outside the port, unlike the Imo, the Mont Blanc was loaded with 3,000 tons of TNT explosives, a large number of flammable and explosive chemicals, and a dozen barrels of gasoline, which was simply a moving bomb.
The next morning, ships were finally able to enter and leave the port, with the Mont Blanc entering through the strait and the Imo leaving at full speed.
According to the rules of passage in the strait, ships need to keep to the right, but there happens to be a ship going backwards on the channel of the Imo, and the Imo does not want to slow down, so it avoids to the left, and then another ship is oncoming on, and the Imo can only keep left again.
At this time, the Imo and the Mont Blanc had met head-on on the same channel, and both ships were honking their horns frantically. The Mont Blanc had the right of priority, but the Imo refused to evade, and both sides turned off their engines and drove by inertia, but even so, the Imo's speed was still fast.
The Mont Blanc was afraid, because there were no dangerous goods on board during wartime, and only it knew what the ship was carrying.
So the Mont Blanc began to turn, but at the same time, the Imo also braked suddenly, and the inertia caused the bow of the Imo and the Mont Blanc to swing in the same direction.
In this way, the two ships collided, the chemicals on board the Mont Blanc leaked, and the sparks generated by the friction between the two ships instantly burst into flames and smoke.
The captain immediately ordered the crew to abandon ship, board the lifeboat and flee. At this time, the two sides of the strait were already surrounded by melon-eating people, and the crew of the lifeboat signaled to the shore for the masses to evacuate, but no one seemed to care.
20 minutes after the impact, the fire on the ship ignited TNT explosives, the explosion resounded in the sky, the buildings within a radius of two kilometers were instantly destroyed, the houses on both sides of the strait were razed to the ground, the residents were blown up to the ground, and the Mont Blanc turned into countless metal fragments that rained down.
A cannon on the Mont Blanc was discovered 5 kilometers away, and the ship's anchor handle, weighing half a ton, was blown up 3 kilometers away, and they all erected a monument in place to commemorate this historical tragedy.
One survivor described the scene: "People were hanging outside the windows and dying. Some heads were missing, others were thrown on overhead wires. ”
