Great Molasses Flood - Wikipedia
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The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster was a disaster that occurred on Wednesday, January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million U.S. gallons (8,700 cubic meters) 13,000 short tons (12,000 metric tons) burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour), killing 21 people and injuring 150. The event entered local folklore and residents reported for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.

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    Cleanup crews used salt water from a fireboat to wash away the molasses and sand to absorb it,[17] and the harbor was brown with molasses until summer.[18] The cleanup in the immediate area took weeks,[19] with several hundred people contributing to the effort,[7]: 132–134, 139 [15] and it took longer to clean the rest of Greater Boston and its suburbs. Rescue workers, cleanup crews, and sight-seers had tracked molasses through the streets and spread it to subway platforms, to the seats inside trains and streetcars, to pay telephone handsets, into homes,[6][7]: 139  and to countless other places. It was reported that “Everything that a Bostonian touched was sticky.”[6]