Original subtitles

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.

- These are the deaths so surprising,

They are truly unbelievable.

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?

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

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.

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?

- The authorities begin to wonder,

Is there some soviet weapon at play?

So the fbi begins investigating this.

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.

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.

desperate, the fbi entertains

A number of strange possibilities.

- 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.

- Gave an official statement, said, "I've seen it.

A fireball came in her window and hit it."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never take anything off the table

Until we're absolutely certain.

- The forensic anthropologist hired by the fbi

- 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.

- Ivan mcguire, adrenaline junkie.

Avid skydiver, this guy loves to jump out of planes.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

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.

unsatisfied with the results,

Frantz decides there is only one way

To truly test this wingsuit.

- 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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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-

- Cachi falls directly onto the head of marta, they both die.

- The impact constitutes essentially a blunt force trauma

To the head.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

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,

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".

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

- It's March 24th, 1975.

Alex mitchell, 50 year old bricklayer from norfolk, England

Sits down and watches favorite tv program, "the goodies".

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.

after a full three minutes,

His blood pressure has doubled, his abdominals tighten.

- 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.

now, we all know laughter can be contagious,

But did you know that dancing can be too?

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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?

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.

- 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, "a ring slipped down a little bit,"

And he tells his boss

And his boss goes, "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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

so just how did this syrupy swamp start?

- It happens that martin's home is adjacent

To an enormous molasses distillery plant.

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.

then, cracks start forming in the tanks.

- The company doesn't fix the problem,

They just paint over it with brown paint, thinking,

No one will notice, which is shady as can be.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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