Thread about a bonkers massive explosion that happened in 1892, a mile from my house in Albany, CA. On July 9, at 9:21am, the nitroglycerin building blew up at Giant Powder Works at Fleming Point (site of today's Golden Gate Fields racetrack). That's how it started. 
This plant was part of a network of explosive and chemical plants around the Bay. Once the nitro blew, everyone in the complex knew the drill and ran for their lives. Buildings at the site soon went up one after another, "as if they were so many mines connected by a fuse."
A few minutes later 500 tons of gunpowder and a huge quantity of dynamite exploded. Boom.
The journal Industry would later dub it "the most extensive explosion of the kind that has ever happened." Several workers were killed instantly: "the loss of life was happily slight...the number reported killed is less than ten, of whom all but three were Chinamen." (cough!)
"The actual cause of the explosion will never be known...the only men who could give any information on the subject are stark, stiff, and mutilated in the Morgue." Remains of the Chinese workers, identified through their braids, were placed in a container the size of a cigar box
The explosion rocked San Francisco (8 miles away). Hundreds of windows shattered. "Immense iron doors of warehouses were forced open. Buildings swayed to and fro," and 2 "iron doors of the Mint were twisted from their hinges."
The gas lights in the San Francisco City Jail were all blown out.
An astronomer on a passing train near the Oakland pier saw "a sheet of flame" leap 100 feet in the air above Fleming Point, but it took 20-25 seconds before the roar and the force of the blast slammed into his car.
In Oakland, also 8 miles away, "thousands of panes of window glass were shattered in private houses." At @UCBerkeley, 4 miles away, "nearly all the window glass in the college building was destroyed."
In Healdsburg, 55 miles away, telegrams went out asking about the mysterious "air-wave." In Sacramento, 60 miles away, "the shock was sufficiently severe to cause persons to rush out of the very substantial Capitol building in terror."
Sacramento's Record Union reported that thousands of people flocked to the scene the day after, stared into the massive new crater in the ground, "and gazed with wonder at the havoc wrought by the force of the explosion."
This was the biggest explosion at the Giant Powder Company works at Fleming Point, but not the first or the deadliest. 38 were killed in a Giant Powder explosion in 1883. 37 of them were Chinese workers. patch.com/california/alb…
