Lest We Forget

[tvordlj]

87 years ago, two ships collided in the Halifax Harbour. One of them was full of explosives which caught fire. The result was the largest and most devastating man made explosion before the nuclear age. The north end of Halifax and Dartmouth were leveled, 2000 people died and nearly 10,000 were injured or blinded. The shockwave was felt as far away as Truro, 60 miles, where dishes rattled on shelves. The day after the explosion, the city was hit with a winter blizzard. There aren't many survivors left, those that still remember are now elderly. December 6 might be the "day of infamy" for the U.S. when Pearl Harbour was attacked, and it might be the anniversary of when a very disturbed Marc Lepine shot 14 women in a university in Montreal in the early 1990's but today Halifax remembers it's own disaster, predating both of those events.

The CBC has an excellent interactive website here, http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/

There's a good written description here. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kylet1/halifax.htm