Posted on Apr 16, 2024
Fertilizer explosion kills more than 500 in Texas | April 16, 1947 | HISTORY
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A giant explosion occurs during the loading of fertilizer onto the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City, Texas, on April 16, 1947. Nearly 600 people lost their lives and thousands were injured when the ship was literally blown to bits.
Ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive by the U.S. Army in World War II and, after the war ended, production of the chemical continued as its use as a fertilizer became accepted. However, the precautions used in its transport became far more lax in the post-war years.
A giant explosion occurs during the loading of fertilizer onto the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City, Texas, on April 16, 1947. Nearly 600 people lost their lives and thousands were injured when the ship was literally blown to bits.
Ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive by the U.S. Army in World War II and, after the war ended, production of the chemical continued as its use as a fertilizer became accepted. However, the precautions used in its transport became far more lax in the post-war years.
Fertilizer explosion kills more than 500 in Texas | April 16, 1947 | HISTORY
Posted from history.com
American History
State of Texas
Explosives
Death
Edited 8 mo ago
Posted 8 mo ago
Responses: 7
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My parents bought some books from Readers Digest for young people. . When I would get sick and have to stay home from school, feeling bad but bored I used to read stories out those books. One story was about the explosion in Texas City entitled “The Day Death Passed me By”. The story was by a sailor working on a ship anchored in the Harbor when the explosion occurred.
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Lt Col Charlie Brown Terrible day in history. And this stupid county I live in let a company build one of these plants here. My son and I have been saying since they built it, "It's not if it blows up, it's when." Thankfully we live about twenty miles from this plant.
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I have read about this explosion in Texas. Several years ago there was a fertaliser plant in Sioux City Iowa that exploded and did a lot of damage. It blew steel shralnel into a power plants coal pile a mile away. These pieces were jamming the coal mills at the plant and had to be removed from the mills. I did this kind of work and did a lot of construct in a fertaliser plant near my home.You have to be very careful when working around Amonium Nitrate. When mixed with Diesel fuel It's a bomb like the one used on the Murtaugh Federal bldg. in Oklahoma City. Rock quaries use it to blast rock.
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