(tense music)
Imagine falling asleep in your armchair one peaceful evening
And then suddenly bursting into flames.
- There's a pile of ash where mary is sitting.
One of her feet is completely intact.
- Or being crushed to death by a falling poodle.
- The dog is getting closer and closer to this balcony.
- It falls the 13 floors.
- How about leaping off the eiffel tower in a flying suit
And plummeting 18 stories to the ground?
- Frantz is so excited to show the world this wingsuit
And then, he jumps.
(dramatic music)
- These are the deaths so surprising,
They are truly unbelievable.
(dramatic music)
It's not unusual for oily rags, grass clippings,
Or even coal to spontaneously catch fire
When the conditions are right,
But could the same thing happen
To a 67 year old woman?
(tense music)
- Mary reeser gets home one night to her apartment,
Plops down in her overstuffed, upholstered easy chair,
Pops a couple of sedatives
'cause she's trying to get some rest,
Passes out and goes to sleep.
- 8:00 am the next morning,
Her landlord, pansy carpenter, smells some smoke.
So she goes and she touches the doorknob
And it's too hot to touch.
So she fears, rightfully so, that there's a fire inside.
(knocking)
- The police department's immediately called
And they show up
And when they open the door, they see something
That they've never seen before.
(tense music)
- Very little is left of the chair,
Just some springs and some debris.
There's a pile of ash where mary was sitting.
One of her feet is completely intact, still in the slipper.
- Stranger still, nothing else
In the apartment has caught fire.
A pile of newspapers, feet away, completely untouched.
Light switches on the wall are melted,
But the outlets on the bottom are still operational
And perfectly intact.
- The pictures are on the walls,
The floor perfectly fine, the ceiling,
No smoke damage and yet mary reeser,
Burned to a crisp, gone.
- [dan] so what caused mary reeser to suddenly go poof?
- For a human body to be fully cremated, you have to be
In a fire that is upwards of 3,000 degrees
For upwards of three hours.
Perhaps she lit a cigarette,
The cigarette lit her clothes on fire and she burned.
Yet somehow, fire didn't spread to any other apartment.
No one smelled smoke, saw smoke.
- There's just no way that any household fire
Would be able to consume a human being that way.
- [dan] even more bizarre, mary's skull is found,
But it's mysteriously smaller.
- In a normal cremation setting,
The human skull is going to crack.
- In her case, the skull shrinks down
To the size of a baseball.
- And doesn't that sound suspicious?
(dramatic music)
- The authorities begin to wonder,
Is there some soviet weapon at play?
So the fbi begins investigating this.
- [dan] it's so perplexing, it makes it all the way up
To director j. Edgar hoover.
- He looks at this case and he's so concerned
That he actually lets the president, harry s. Truman,
Know about this case going on in florida.
He employs his top forensic anthropologist
At the time, wilton krogman.
- [dan] wilton krogman is a pioneer in the forensics field
And the most qualified man in the country to solve the case.
- He shows up to the scene
And he has no idea what's going on.
How does a skull shrink in a fire?
That's not a thing that's supposed to happen.
- [dan] desperate, the fbi entertains
A number of strange possibilities.
(tense music)
- A lot of people speculate foul play
And that someone had come in and doused mary
With kerosene and set her alight.
- All the associated things
That you would have inside of an arson case
With accelerant, all the samples that were collected
And sent to the laboratory, none of it comes back
With any sort of traces of accelerant in it.
- The next theory the fbi investigates
Comes from an anonymous tip.
- An anonymous person calls up
And says that a fireball comes in through the window,
Lights mary on fire.
(dramatic music)
- Gave an official statement, said, "I've seen it.
A fireball came in her window and hit it."
(fire crackling)
Generally speaking, fireballs don't fly through windows.
- What it could be is another unexplained phenomenon
Of ball lightning, which is controversial.
It may or may not exist.
I mean, how much credence do we put into anonymous tips?
I mean, right there we think it's a little bit of bs.
- [dan] is it possible the most likely explanation
Is also the most unbelievable?
Spontaneous human combustion?
- Spontaneous human combustion is an idea
That someone just all of a sudden bursts into flames
And it only impacts the individual
And it doesn't impact anything else.
- Spontaneous combustion does happen in nature.
Hay bales, you have wet and dry hay,
The wet hay still alive,
Going through its respiration process,
Taking in carbon dioxide,
Pumping out oxygen, and this creates heat.
So you'll have hay bales that just spontaneously combust.
- [dan] the question is,
Could this also happen to humans?
Shockingly, there have been roughly 200 recorded cases
Of spontaneous human combustion in history.
- In 1470, there is an italian knight in milan
Who after a night of drinking, according to witnesses,
Begins to actually belch up flame.
And finally, his entire body combusts seemingly from within.
- In 1982, a woman named jean safin
In the uk, again, same exact circumstances,
Completely burned,
Yet parts of her body found intact.
No one could understand it.
- And a little bit more recently, in 2010,
An irishman named michael faherty is found
Completely burned and charred to ashes on his floor.
None of the combustible materials
Around him are also found burnt, so eerily similar to mary.
- [dan] but in mary's case, the fbi is unwilling
To list spontaneous human combustion
As the official cause of death.
What they come up with isn't any less strange.
- So the belief is that mary succumbed
To something known as the wick effect.
- In essence, the body is an inside out candle.
The clothing is the wick that catches flame,
But the combustible hydrocarbons found in human fat
Literally serve to fuel the fire.
- Because she's an overweight woman that was also a smoker,
The fbi suggests that the cigarette burns her nightgown,
Which causes her to go up in flame,
Because she's a heavier woman, that leads
To the fire continuing to burn
For a longer period of time.
- [dan] not everyone accepts this answer.
- There are lots of problems with this theory.
The first of which is that millions of people fall asleep
With lit cigarettes and they don't usually end up cremated.
- So people are thinking,
Why would you not wake up if you are currently on fire?
- Even with sedatives, there's still a great likelihood
That a person would start thrashing around.
Spontaneous human combustion,
It's the last place investigators want to go,
But sometimes they're forced to go there
In the absence of any other explanations.
- I think it's a damn strange world. (laughing)
I never take anything off the table
Until we're absolutely certain.
(dramatic music)
- The forensic anthropologist hired by the fbi
Has this to say.
"were I living in the middle ages,
I'd mutter something about black magic."
- We all know the feeling.
You leave the house only to realize you forgot your wallet
Or your keys or your phone.
Now imagine for a moment you've just jumped out
Of an airplane and realize what you forgot
To bring is something much more vital.
(tense music)
- Ivan mcguire, adrenaline junkie.
Avid skydiver, this guy loves to jump out of planes.
(plane whirring)
- Nowadays, you see people with gopros
And phones attached to their helmets.
It's a pretty standard thing
To see this aerial view and this angle of jumping out
Of a plane, but it's something
That we didn't really see back in 1988,
But ivan mcguire wanted to capture that.
He's done more than 800 skydives
And he has this dream of showing the world
What he sees when he leaves the plane.
- [dan] on April 4th, 1988,
Ivan mounts a brand new, 8mm video camera
To his helmet and is ready for his third jump of the day.
- This is the 1980s,
So these cameras are still pretty large.
They're pretty bulky,
Certainly compared to what we know today.
There's gonna be a lot of force of wind
And so forth, so this has
To be really carefully attached to the helmet.
- He takes the entire plane right up there
To check the camera, wipe the lens to make sure
That he's gonna get the perfect shot.
- [dan] warning, the footage you are about to see
May be unsettling.
- The two tandem jumpers give him the thumbs up.
So ivan seizes the moment and leaps from the plane.
They're plummeting through the air.
The tandem guys pull their parachute
And boom, it's the perfect shot.
Now, it's time for ivan's money shot,
The pov of him falling silently
Through the north carolina sky.
- But he goes to deploy his own parachute
And there's nothing there.
- Ivan has forgotten his own parachute.
- His total free fall was about 30 seconds
At 150 miles per hour,
And he fell more than 10,000 feet from the air.
- [dan] ivan does not survive the fall,
But miraculously, his camera does.
- Investigators surmised that ivan's preoccupation
With his video camera caused him to forget
To shoulder his own parachute.
And so ironically, he ends up filming his own death.
Reason 1,000 why I am never jumping out of an airplane.
- [dan] ivan isn't the only daredevil
Who needed a good parachute.
An even more infamous case took place 80 years earlier.
Here, friends, is the sad case of the flying tailor.
- Frantz reichelt is an austrian tailor living in paris.
He makes dresses for a living,
But his real passion is this new budding field of flying.
(tense music)
- It's the early 20th century, 1903,
The wright brothers take their first heavier than air
Powered flight, brave new world
And everyone is aviation crazy,
Especially the french,
'cause the french also invented the hot air balloon.
- In 1910, flying is extremely dangerous.
He sees all of these pilots dying in these test flights,
So he wants to do something to help out.
And up until this time,
Parachuting technology has really only been used
For jumping out of balloons and very high altitudes.
So there's this push to find new parachute technology,
Much lighter weight for pilots themselves to be able
To jump out at lower altitudes when they're taking these
Test flights around the country.
- [dan] coincidentally, a french aviation organization
Offers a hefty prize
To anyone who can create a smaller chute.
- So frantz decides to enter this contest
And take his expertise as a tailor, sewing dresses
And garments using silk and rods,
And he ends up developing a wingsuit.
- It looks like a batman suit.
It looks like something out of a futuristic superhero movie.
- [dan] more peculiar than his design
Is his method for testing it.
He puts it on a dummy and tosses it from the window
Of his fifth floor paris apartment.
- I don't really understand how he was allowed to do this,
That there were just dummies landing on the streets of paris
And nobody had any complaints about this.
- [dan] unsatisfied with the results,
Frantz decides there is only one way
To truly test this wingsuit.
(suspenseful music)
- He puts on his own wingsuit
And climbs out of his fifth floor window.
And he breaks his leg.
- But frantz is onto something.
He goes, ah ha, ha ha.
I didn't give my wingsuit enough time
To gather enough air to create resistance.
I need to go higher.
Luckily, he's in paris
And at this point in time, the tallest structure
On earth is the eiffel tower.
- He starts petitioning the paris police to allow him
To throw winged dummies off of the eiffel tower
As part of a test for his new suit.
- [dan] surprisingly, not only do the french authorities
Grant permission, but it becomes a huge press event.
- Frantz is so excited to show the world this wingsuit.
He puts out a press release to announce to the world
That he has found the solution of aviation safety.
- [dan] on the cold morning of February 4th, 1912,
Frantz arrives at the eiffel tower sans dummy.
- It's frantz himself dressed in his wingsuit
And everyone goes, where's the dummy?
And he goes, there is no dummy.
- [dan] from this moment on, frantz reichelt
Becomes known as the flying tailor.
- His friends are pleading with him,
"you're not gonna do this, are you?
You're not gonna actually do this yourself."
But frantz is convinced the suit will work
And he's gonna prove it.
- [austin] frantz is leaning forward on the edge
Of the parapet of the eiffel tower.
- He hesitates for about 40 seconds.
He seems to actually have second thoughts
For the first time in this story,
But then frantz sees the crowd below him and he waves
And he says, "à bientô,"
Which means, "I'll see you soon."
And then he jumps.
- [dan] the parachute never fully opens.
Two seconds after jumping, frantz hits the ground
And dies, leaving a six inch deep
Frantz shaped imprint in the ground.
- What's particularly sad
And ironic about this entire story is that just two days
Before frantz parachuted to his death,
An american named rodman law
Had successfully parachuted off the top
Of the torch of the statue of liberty,
Which he just did on a whim for fun.
- There's part of me that looks at him
And thinks this is classic hubris.
This is pride goes before the fall, literally.
And at the same time, this is the genius of madness.
When it works, we celebrate those people
Who are willing to push through as heroes,
And when it fails, it's very easy
To dismiss them as being crazy.
- [dan] sometimes, there's no way to know if it works
Until it doesn't.
- What do an argentinian poodle
And a world renowned 19th century amputation surgeon
Have in common?
The answer is as tragic as it is bizarre.
Cachi the poodle's story begins fittingly high up,
On an apartment building's unluckiest floor.
(eerie music)
- In buenos aires in 1988, the montoya family
Has this apartment on the 13th floor.
Their son is playing with the pet poodle, cachi.
- And the son throws the ball towards the open door
To the balcony and the dog goes bounding after it.
- As it is getting closer and closer to this balcony,
The dog tries to stop.
The dog does not.
(dramatic music)
This story saddens me so much more than any human tragedy.
- Cachi falls the 13 floors, which is heartbreaking
If you are an animal lover.
At that very moment, a 75 year old woman named marta espina,
She's walking around her neighborhood
Doing some shopping and then all of a sudden-
(claps)
- Cachi falls directly onto the head of marta, they both die.
- The impact constitutes essentially a blunt force trauma
To the head.
(sirens blaring)
- [dan] but the tragic chain of events doesn't end here.
- Another woman named edith is across the street,
Happens to see this.
Immediately, her good samaritan intent kicks in,
She jumps up to run across the street to check on this woman.
- And she...
(claps) gets hit by a bus.
So now you have cachi the poodle,
You have marta, you have edith.
- There is a third person, a man
Who apparently has just come outta the pharmacy
With his prescription, sees all of this play out.
- It's too much for him to take.
- He has a heart attack and he dies there on the spot.
The fourth casualty of cachi the poodle's game of fetch.
- [dan] cachi, a legend, an unbelievable killer dog.
His odd death toll should be unrivaled,
But consider the case
Of one of the 19th century's top surgeons,
Dr. Robert liston.
- Robert liston is a surgical phenom.
- He's one of the most respected surgeons in london.
At 14, he's already practicing medicine
And at 22, he's teaching in the medical college at edinburgh.
- [dan] he quickly comes to master
A very specific type of surgery, amputations.
- If someone has an infected or otherwise wounded limb
Or a broken bone that cannot be set,
The sole practice of medicine
At this time is amputation.
- Moreover, there is no such thing as anesthetic.
If you're in surgery, you are awake
As you endure this unbelievable amount of pain.
- In an age where there's no anesthesia, speed counts.
Liston prides himself in being able
To conduct amputations faster and cleaner than anyone else,
And the statistics bear him out.
Where most surgeons at the time have a 25% mortality rate,
He only has a 15% mortality rate.
You are in better hands with robert liston
Than with anyone else in london.
- [dan] his swiftness earns him an impressive nickname.
- He's known as "the fastest knife on the west end."
- He would argue he's the fastest knife in the world.
(tense music)
- Liston is a very large man.
He's built like a bull.
Other surgeons require at least two
Or three assistants to hold down a struggling patient.
Liston requires only one assistant.
He takes his knife, holds it in his teeth,
Fastens down the tourniquet above the point of amputation,
Removes the knife,
Holding the patient down, along with the assistant.
(cracking) (tense music)
Severs the limb.
As brutal as it sounds to us today,
If you are in such a situation, liston is the surgeon
To whom you want to go.
- [yohuru] liston becomes very full of himself
And his prowess.
- He is a showboat, he is cocky.
- He loves to call out to the medical students,
"time me, gentlemen."
And it becomes in some sense, his catchphrase,
- [dan] hubris and haste,
A dangerous combination for a surgeon
And one that leads to an infamous moment.
Liston is performing an amputation in a medical theater.
- He might as well have walked in like a boxer,
Taken his robe off.
- In his typical manner, he turns to the crowd
And says to them, "time me, gentleman."
- "gentleman, time me".
(intense music)
Dr. Liston cuts off the limb of the patient so quickly
That he also severs the fingers of his surgical assistant
Who is holding down the screaming patient.
- Now, liston recognizes his mistake
And immediately draws the knife back as quickly as possible.
- He winds up cutting the garments
Of an elderly medical colleague
Who is standing behind him observing the procedure.
The colleague is so shocked and frightened
That he drops dead from a heart attack.
- Liston's assistant, who had two of his fingers removed,
Died later on from infection.
And the patient who had his leg amputated
Also ended up dying from infection.
So at the end of this surgical display of prowess,
Dr. Robert liston, the fastest knife in the west end,
Kills not one, not two,
But three separate people of infection, infection and shock.
One surgery, three fatalities.
Take that, argentinian poodle.
- Now technically speaking, if you look at the math here
And count cachi himself, the poodle one upped dr. Liston.
The good doctor must be turning over in his grave.
There are some sports that are so inherently dangerous,
An occasional death doesn't come as a shock.
Take mixed martial arts, formula 1 racing,
Perhaps running with the bulls at pamplona.
But tennis?
- Honestly, most injuries in tennis
Happen from watching gameplay,
Just watching the ball go from right to left on the court.
- [dan] but what happens to dick wertheim
Is truly one for the books.
- Dick wertheim is a lifelong tennis person.
He's played, he's been a linesman.
It's not exactly what you would consider
To be a dangerous line of work.
Being a ball boy could be argued
As more dangerous than being a linesman in tennis.
(dramatic music)
- [dan] on September 10th, 1983,
Wertheim is officiating the us open junior boys title match
Between a young stefan edberg of sweden
And simon youl of australia.
- Stefan edberg goes on to become
One of the greatest players
Of his generation, once winning wimbledon
And twice winning the aussie and us open.
- The way they officiated back then,
Dick wertheim is at the end line, right in the center.
- Stefan edberg being a fantastic player.
- Serves this tennis ball
And just whips it 115 miles an hour.
- That ball hits the court, takes a weird spin
And goes straight at dick
And winds up hitting him.
- Directly in the groin.
(crowd gasping)
- With such force that it forces wertheim
Straight backwards, his head hits the court
And he's immediately unconscious.
- Dick is rushed to flushing hospital
Where he dies five days later of a subdural hematoma.
(dramatic music)
- Immediately after this happens,
The international tennis federation
Stops having linesmen sit on the court in the same fashion
That dick wertheim was.
So this will likely never happen again.
- Luckily, the only other loss that day
Is suffered by stefan's opponent simon youl,
Who is defeated in straight sets.
6-2, 6... Nevermind, not important.
Next, a death that could give even dick wertheim
A run for his money.
- Frank hayes, born in 1901,
He grows up in ireland and it is his dream
To become a world champion jockey.
- [dan] although frank believes he is born to be a jockey,
His genetics beg to differ.
He weighs 142 pounds, much heavier than most jockeys.
- Frank hayes moves to new york city.
He still loves horses and he still wants
To be around this sport in some way,
But he's still a little bit too large to be a jockey.
- So he has to reset and he has to start somewhere.
So he starts working as a trainer for race horses.
- But imagine you're frank hayes
And you grew up wanting to be a jockey
And you're working as a stable hand.
You're doing all of the grunt work, you're getting none
Of the glory and you're watching these jockeys
Win these races and it's as close
As you can possibly get to it
Without actually tasting that victory.
- [dan] then, fate steps in when the owner
Of a horse named sweet kiss finds himself without a jockey.
- The owner says, "listen,
If you can lose 10 pounds somehow in a day,
Then you can ride this horse."
Now, frankly, I'm not sure if the owner
Expected him to be able to do it.
- Frank is fired up.
He is ready to do whatever it takes to make sure
That he can get on the back of sweet kiss
And ride this horse to victory.
So over the next 24 hours, we are going full rocky,
Rocky iv, 1980s montage.
We are talking about shadow boxing.
We're talking about running, fasting, not drinking water,
Losing as much weight, sweating, doing whatever he can
To drop as much weight as possible.
- The next day when he weighs in,
He actually loses 12 pounds.
It's about 8.5 percent of his body weight.
This sort of rapid weight loss is really taxing on the body
Because it taxes your immune system,
Your kidneys, and your heart.
- [dan] but it's all worth it when a thrilled hayes
Suits up for his debut race.
- So the horse that frank hayes is riding,
Sweet kiss, enters as a 20 to 1 underdog.
The far and away favorite in this race
Is a horse named gimmy
Who was expected to just run away with this race.
- And sweet kiss takes off like a bat outta hell
With frank on top.
- And hayes is doing everything he can
To get this horse into the lead and he starts
To bound away, he's starting to pull it off.
He's starting to gain length
Ahead of all the rest of the field.
Can he do it?
- Frank is living the dream
And he slumps forward at one point during the race.
Seems weird, but the horse just kind of kicks it
Into higher gear.
- [announcer] in the home stretch, it's all over,
But the statistics.
- He crosses the finish line in this hunched position.
- He has won the race.
Frank hayes has done it.
He has achieved his dream of being a champion jockey.
- [dan] instead of raising his arms to celebrate,
Frank is oddly still.
- The owner comes rushing over to him,
Ecstatic with this completely long shot victory.
- And as he's about to congratulate him,
Frank hayes falls off the saddle,
Face first into the racetrack.
- As it turns out, frank has had a heart attack.
He died before crossing the finish line.
Frank hayes becomes the only person in horse racing history
To ever ride across the finish line of a race
And win as a dead man.
- [dan] as for the horse, he never races again,
Earning the unofficial nickname, "sweet kiss of death."
- Frank ends up getting buried at holy cross cemetery
In brooklyn, wearing the very jockey uniform
That he was wearing when he crossed the finish line
And won this race at belmont.
He very literally died a winner.
- Dead jockey wins at belmont.
Now, that's a funny headline you don't read every day.
But is it funny enough to kill you?
- The 1970s are a great era for sketch comedy,
I should know.
But has a bit ever been so funny it has literally killed?
(tense music)
- It's March 24th, 1975.
Alex mitchell, 50 year old bricklayer from norfolk, England
Sits down and watches favorite tv program, "the goodies".
- [dan] the goodies are very big in britain
At the time.
Your classic, broad humored comedy trio.
- Alex mitchell watches the show religiously.
That night, the episode is "kung fu capers".
- The height of it being a kilt clad scotsman
With his bagpipe battling another opponent
Armed with a black pudding.
- I assume this was funny in 1975.
- You know who thought it was funny?
Alex thought it was funny.
- Mr. Mitchell begins to laugh and it increases in volume
And it increases in ferocity.
- He begins to laugh uncontrollably to the point
That he is literally urinating in his pants.
He cannot control his bowels, all systems are go.
- [dan] after a full three minutes,
His blood pressure has doubled, his abdominals tighten.
(tense music) (clock ticking)
- He's laughing uncontrollably for six minutes
And that six minutes then extends into 15 minutes.
- It gets more and more convulsive.
He's grasping at his chest both for air
And the pain in his accelerating heartbeat.
- He's laughing so hard that it's taxing his respiratory
And circulatory system
And he has a massive heart attack
And dies, coronary due to laughter.
They say that laughter is the best medicine.
I think alex overdosed on it.
- [dan] now, we all know laughter can be contagious,
But did you know that dancing can be too?
(tense music)
- In the summer of 1518,
A dance craze sweeps through the town
Of strasbourg, France, but it's not a dance
That people are actually choosing to do.
You have people convulsing,
Flailing around, tripping over themselves,
Dancing in the street until their feet bleed.
- [dan] it all starts one hot July day
When a woman catches what will come to be known
As the dancing bug.
- A housewife walks into the square and begins to dance.
- But it's not like normal dancing.
(tense music)
She starts to gyrate and gesticulate.
She can't be dissuaded from this frantic dancing.
- There's no music.
- No accompaniment.
- And a crowd begins to gather around her.
What is this strange spectacle?
- And for some reason, this becomes infectious.
- [dan] soon, roughly 30 other dancers
Join in the incessant dance-off.
- Each passing day,
More and more townspeople begin to gyrate,
Shake out in the streets to the point
Where their feet are bloody.
Their bodies are racked with pain
And yet they keep going
Through these same hysterical motions.
- [yohuru] there are 30, 40 people dancing along with her.
- Then, it grows to anywhere up to 400.
The town is now in crisis.
A substantial population is engaged
In this agonizing dance marathon.
Their limbs are getting bloody.
They are falling and collapsing of exhaustion.
- A person would dance, drop dead,
And people would continue to dance around them.
- They assume about 15 people
A week actually die from the dancing plague.
- [dan] eager to end the dancing,
Officials finally take action.
Their idea, more dancing.
- They add fuel to the fire.
They hire musicians to dance the so-called hot blood
Out of the afflicted dancers.
It doesn't work.
- With the weeks passing and deaths mounting,
The city decides it is time to crack down on sin.
Immediately, all of the gambling houses
And brothels are shut down.
They even try making dancing illegal, a la "footloose",
But none of this works.
Eventually, they turn to a healing shrine nearby.
(tense music)
- They lead some of these hundreds of dancers
To the healing shrine
Where the afflicted are given red slippers,
Anointed with holy water.
- And it works, believe it or not,
As a result of this effort to kind of remove them
To st. Vitus' church and these red shoes,
The dancing eventually subsides.
- The dancing plague of 1518 is possibly
The most bizarre case of mass hysteria
That's ever been reported.
There is sickness in the village,
There is plague, leprosy.
People might feel anxious about their survival,
But would that in and of itself
Be enough to generate this kind of mass hysteria?
- [dan] well, we know it wasn't the music.
- Throughout history, many people have come
To an unfortunate end due to an excess of alcohol,
But never in an incident quite as bizarre
As what happened in london 200 years ago.
(tense music)
- In 19th century london, there's a veritable arms race
For who can produce the most and the best beer.
The winner at the time is the horseshoe brewery,
In the slums of st. Giles.
- The horseshoe brewery is producing
Large amounts of porter.
- 103,000 barrels a year.
Imagine, if you will, hundred thousand gallon,
Wooden vats held together with iron bands.
A worker wanders by one of the vats one day
And he says, "ah, a ring slipped down a little bit,"
And he tells his boss
And his boss goes, "oh yeah, that happens. That happens."
- The iron hoop actually buckles,
Releasing gas in the tank.
- And a massive explosion
And a chain reaction occurs where one vat pops
And then it pops these subsequent other vats.
- As a result, st. Giles rookery
Will now be the site of a 15 foot tidal wave,
388,000 gallons of porter beer,
Which comes rushing out of the horseshoe brewery.
- [dan] no matter how much you like beer,
Let's face it,
A 15 foot wave of the stuff is terrifying.
- Because it's essentially a slum, st. Giles rookery
Is so overcrowded.
There are a lot of people living 2 and 3 families to a home.
People living in basements and we have
A deadly flood of hot beer.
- Mary banfield is having tea with her daughter
In one of these basements.
The flood fills it from the bottom up
And mary is able to swim to escape,
But her daughter is not.
Notoriously at this time, there is a irish wake happening
And this party is absolutely devastated
By a 45 mile an hour deluge of porter.
- When all's said and done at the end of the day,
More than eight people are dead.
And that's not even accounting for the hundreds of people
That ended up injured from this whole thing.
- [dan] that doesn't stop hoards of people
Swarming the streets
To score free beer, no matter the risk.
- We do have a great deal of illness
Because as you can imagine, scooping beer out of the gutters
That are full of human waste and debris
And horse excrement doesn't make for a good drink.
- It seems kind of like a street party, except yuck.
And there's actually an unsubstantiated story
That one of the men dies from alcohol poisoning.
- [dan] over 100 years later,
An even weirder flood takes an american city by storm.
- We're in boston in 1919
And we've got history repeating itself
In an eerily similar fashion.
- Martin clopherty is in his room taking a nap.
His family is downstairs enjoying a meal.
- And he's awakened by the rumbling noise.
- [dan] before he can call out to his family,
An explosion rocks the neighborhood.
- Martin is flung forcefully from his bed,
Through his window and lands outside.
- Just imagine you wake up,
You're now in the street in front of your house,
Surrounded by a sea of black and sticky tar like substance.
Maybe you're still dreaming.
Maybe it's a nightmare you'll wake up from.
You put your fingers down to taste.
It's not tar.
- [dan] it's molasses.
So odd that martin can't quite believe it.
- Everybody's accounted for except for his mother.
He sees her through the window.
Covered head to toe now in molasses,
He realizes he can't lift his feet.
- He's trying desperately to try to get to her,
But the more he moves, the more stuck he gets.
- He sees the house collapse, leaving his mother
As one of the casualties of the molasses flood.
- [dan] so just how did this syrupy swamp start?
- It happens that martin's home is adjacent
To an enormous molasses distillery plant.
- [dan] yep, the same molasses grandma put
In her gingerbread cookies also creates disasters.
This one starts
With unseasonably warm weather in January.
When the temperatures reach a high of 40 degrees,
The distillery doesn't turn down
The furnaces used to keep the molasses from freezing.
- The molasses heats up precipitously.
It begins to expand.
It begins to buckle the enormous holding vat.
- [dan] then, cracks start forming in the tanks.
- The company doesn't fix the problem,
They just paint over it with brown paint, thinking,
Oh, no one will notice, which is shady as can be.
(dramatic music)
(rupture booming)
- When this vat ruptures and bursts,
The molasses is completely fluid and it's moving fast.
- And then, it's a mad rush to try to survive.
- A public works employee is repairing the streets
With cobblestones.
This huge flood comes down the street.
It knocks him 20 feet into a pile
Of unforgiving granite cobble stones and cracks his skull.
- [dan] he may have survived if not for the fact
That as molasses cools, it becomes thicker.
- The molasses begins to harden.
So like bugs in amber, you have whole humans encased.
Anybody who's trapped within this vast blob
Is smothered to death.
- It's slow enough that if you're in it,
You're aware of what's going on as it's all ending.
Awful.
(tense music)
- [dan] the tidal wave of molasses devastates the city.
- Streetcars, livestock, vehicles,
Commercial buildings are covered.
- They're trying to scrape the molasses.
They're trying to dissolve the molasses.
They're adding sand to the situation
So something grippy can grab
Some of that molasses stickiness.
- [dan] after four days,
Rescuers stop searching for survivors.
Many of the dead are so covered with molasses
That they are unrecognizable to their families.
- There are 21 deaths
Attributed to the great molasses flood.
- Not all victims of the molasses flood
Are buried in the molasses.
Some are actually washed right out to boston harbor,
As they're now encased in molasses
And sunk under the water.
Some of them are not found until three or four months
After the fact when their bodies begin to float
Up to the top of the harbor.
- Bostonians report for years and years later,
The smell of molasses permeating the area
And public fixtures like lampposts and public telephones
And the elevated railways still being sticky to the touch
Years down the road.
- Most of us hope our deaths will be fairly uneventful,
But for those facing a speeding tennis ball, a flying poodle,
Or a funny tv show, the end came in ways
That are truly unbelievable.