The Halifax Explosion 1917

The explosion in Beirut should have reminded Canadians of our own tragedy, the great Halifax explosion which occurred December 6th, 1917. Wikipedia has a good detailed article which I will attempt to abstract and illustrate with maps from several sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion.

Halifax was a major stopping off point between Europe and New York. The harbour was relatively safe as submarine nets protected it at night and were lowered to allow ships in and out in daylight. The inner harbour, Bedford Basin, was the main anchorage where merchant convoys were put together. The Narrows separated Bedford Basin from Halifax Harbour. 

Ships navigating the narrows were to keep to the right with the oncoming ship to their left. Speed was limited to 5 knots or 9.3 kmph. Ship traffic was very high and rules were sometimes ignored in the name of speed. The Harbour Master informed the authorities that he could no longer guarantee the safety of ships in the harbour.

Map of Halifax Harbour, the Narrows and Bedford Basin

The SS Imo was a Norwegian ship headed for New York to take on relief supplies for Belgium. Anchored in the Bedford Basin, she did not finish loading coal until after the submarine nets had been raised on December 5th and was stuck there until morning. The SS Mont Blanc was a French ship taking explosives from New York to France via Halifax. She carried 2,925 tonnes of explosives—including 62 tonnes of guncotton, 246 tonnes of benzol, a highly flammable liquid, 250 tonnes of TNT, and 2,367 tonnes of picric acid. She arrived too late to enter the harbour December 5th. No one was aware of the load she carried and though she asked for special protection, it was not given. 

Why the collision occurred

When the Imo was given permission in the morning to leave Bedford Basin, she set out fast to make up time but was forced to her left by oncoming boats. The incoming Mont Blanc, moving slowly signalled the Imo to move over but was initially refused. The Mont Blanc swerved hard left to avoid a collision just as the Imo also swerved right. The two ships collided and sparked ignited the spilled benzol. Firefighters rushed to control the flames, not knowing of the danger and 20 minutes after the collision at 9:05 am, the Mont Blanc exploded.

The area totally destroyed by the explosion

The explosion killed at least 1950 people and injured another 9,000. Thousands of people had stopped to watch the ship burning in the harbour. The explosion destroyed the north end of Halifax, left 6,000 completely homeless and 25,000 with insufficient shelter in damaged homes. A raging blizzard the next day helped put out the fires but hampered rescue efforts. 

Help came by train from all over Nova Scotia and elsewhere. Damages were estimated at $31million and about $30 million was raised from a number of sources including $750,000 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

One story I read some time ago, not mentioned in the Wiki article, was of a telegraph operator who stayed at his station frantically trying to reach the night passenger train from St John which would be pulling into Halifax at this time. He managed to stop the train just short of the damage zone but lost his life in the explosion.

Halifax was rebuilt and international rules about identifying dangerous cargo were strengthened. In 2000, my late wife and I visited Halifax and saw some of the markers commemorating the explosion, a rather sobering experience.

Ammonium Nitrate - nitrogen fertilizer and deadly explosive

 Ammonium nitrate has the chemical formula NH₄NO₃. Produced as small porous pellets, or “prills”, it’s one of the world’s most widely used fertilisers, referred to by its NPK formula of 34- 0-0. It is made by combining ammonia gas with liquid nitric acid, which itself is made from ammonia.

It's use as a fertilizer in Canada is declining as urea (46-0-0) and anhydrous ammonia (84-0-0) are more economical and so more popular.

Ammonium nitrate is also the main component in many types of mining explosives, where it’s mixed with fuel oil and detonated by an explosive charge. I first heard of ammonium nitrate as an explosive when I was living in Ontario in the early 1970s. Highway construction in many parts of the province requires a great deal of blasting of solid rock to create a road bed in the Canadian Shield.

Highway construction crews used big trucks with compartments of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. Holes were drilled in the rock to be blasted, then the ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel were pumped into the holes, mixed while pumping. Large anti-blast mats made of tires were dragged over the spot and the explosive mixture detonated. 

Ammonium nitrate is classified as dangerous goods and all aspects of its use are tightly regulated because it can be used in the making of bombs. Two tonnes of Ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel were used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma city bombing in 1995 which killed 168 people, injured at least 600 others and destroyed or damaged 324 building and 86 cars within a 16 block radius.  

The amount of ammonium nitrate which exploded in Beirut was over 10 times that, making the blast the equivalent of several hundred tonnes of TNT.

Ammonium nitrate does not burn on its own. Instead, it acts as a source of oxygen that can accelerate the combustion (burning) of other materials. In order for an accidental explosion to occur several things have to go wrong.

For combustion to occur, oxygen must be present. Ammonium nitrate prills provide a much more concentrated supply of oxygen than the air around us. This is why it is effective in mining explosives, where it’s mixed with oil and other fuels.

At high enough temperatures, however, ammonium nitrate can violently decompose on its own. This process creates gases including nitrogen oxides and water vapour. It is this rapid release of gases that causes an explosion.

Ammonium nitrate decomposition can be set off if an explosion occurs where it’s stored, if there is an intense fire nearby. The latter is what happened in the 2015 Tianjin explosion, which killed 173 people after flammable chemicals and ammonium nitrate were stored together at a chemicals factory in eastern China.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-ammonium-nitrate-the-chemical-that-exploded-in-beirut

The following is a true story. The names have been redacted to protect the guilty. About 30 years ago, long before Oklahoma made it impossible to buy this stuff across the counter, a friend of mine decided he needed a dugout in a coulee a good distance east of his farm site to water his cattle when the grazed there. He had heard of using ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel as an explosive. With that very limited knowledge (not that it had ever stopped him before) he bought a 25 kg bag of 34-0-0 and with a can of diesel fuel went down into the coulee. He set the bag where he wanted the dugout, poured the diesel into it, added a dynamite cap and 30 minutes of fuse, then covered it with mud.  He then retreated about 750 meters (1/2 mile) away on the highway where he could watch the action.

And action he got. Far more than he bargained on. The explosion rattled windows in the town a few km away, as well as in his own yard. His truck was showered with stones and dirt. The RCMP showed up in minutes and chewed him a new one. But he was happy. He had a dugout, and learned something new while having fun.

Kizhi Island - an outdoor architecture museum

The Hagia Sophia post sparked Diane Henders' memory of a History of Architecture class she once took. That would be a most interesting class as it must have covered many of the architectural wonders of the world, of which several must have been in Russia and Ukraine.

I have visited two outdoor museums of historical architecture in Ukraine, the Pyrohiv Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine near Kyiv, and the Pereyaslav National Historic-Ethnographic Reserve at Pereyaslav Khmelnitsky. These are easily visited from Kyiv and need at least a very long day to see everything. 

Click to enlarge

One outdoor museum I would live to visit that is NOT easily accessible is Kizhi Island 6 km by 1 km, in the middle of Lake Onega in Karelia. One travels by plane or train to Petrozavodsk a city of 260,000 on the shore of Lake Onega, which is worth a visit all on its own. From there a hydrofoil takes you 68 km to Kizhi Island, the home of more than 80 historical wooden structures.

The island was settled since at least the 1400s but only one small settlement remains. In the 18th century two large churches and a bell tower were built. They are now known as Kizhi Pogost and are a UNESCO Heritage site.

In the 1950s many wooden structures from Karelia were moved to the Island for preservation. Someday, I should like to visit.

Kizhi Island churches https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MatthiasKabel

Kizhi Island Settlement  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alexxx1979

Chapel of the Archangel Michael https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:A.Savin/UP

The Hagia Sophia - Cathedral, Mosque, Museum, Mosque

The Hagia Sophia is in the news again as Friday prayers were held there for the first time since Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum in 1935. Erdogan is playing to his base of strident nationalists and pious Muslims by making this move which is unpopular at least in all Christendom.

Erdogan misrepresents history of Hagia Sophia

https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/erdogan-misrepresents-history-of-hagia-sophia/

Turkey says it will not touch anything but simply cover the Christian stuff during prayers. Which is better than the Turks did in 1453, when Mehmed II aka Mehmed the Conqueror, captured Constantinople, changed the name to Istanbul, and ended the Byzantine Empire once and for all. The Cathedral had no meaning to them but just to show who was now in charge they promptly built 4 minarets, one on each corner, and destroyed or plastered over anything remotely "Christian" looking.

My pictures from 1999 turned out to be of the Blue Mosque which I also visited, so I am borrowing a couple from Wikipedia. I did not take enough pictures that day.

By Arild Vågen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24932378

Christophe Meneboeuf - Own work The full series about Istanbul: Photos of Istanbul More of my work on my photoblog: http://www.pixinn.net

The Hagia Sophia was build in 537 by Emperor Justinian I as the Echumenical Patrirchal Cathedral of Constantinople (along with Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria). After the Great Schism of 1054, Christianity was divided into Catholic under rome and Orthodox under the Patriarchs of which Constantinople was the greatest.

Constantinople was not easy to capture. The Crusaders captured the city in 1204, looted and destroyed it to some extent. The Byzantines recaptured it 60 years later. The urks tried several times to take the city so it was a matter of pride to eventually capture it. They were not kind to the defenders and massacred a great many of the inhabitants. Once the dust and blood settled, the surviving clergy fled to Moscow which now considers itself the Third Rome and the intelligentsia fled to Venice, providing a major boost to the Renaissance.

For anyone interested in the decline of the Byzantium Empire and the fall of Constantinople, I suggest reading Roger Crowley's 1453: the holy war for Constantinople and the clash of Isma and the West.

Why have masks become the hill to die on?

The government regulates many activities for the common good. Usually after a certain amount of fuss and resistance they are generally accepted by all but a few hard heads. Seat belts, helmets for bicycles, motorcycles and scooters, signal lights, stop signs and stop lights, smoke alarms, and the list goes on. So why the visceral refusal to wear masks? Even in the 1918 Flu epidemic.

My own hypothesis is this: The regulations that are accepted more or less protect not only you but me also. So I have a vested interest in following them. Masks have been sold from the onset as protecting the other person from you but not necessarily protecting you. There is a certain type of personality that sees no reason to inconvenience themselves in the slightest to provide a benefit only to someone else.

Instead of raging against the pandemic, they rage against "tyranny".

I suspect that the resistance to gun-control is much the same. Why should I "give up" my guns just to save someone's kids from being killed in a school?

Topsoil, rainfall and the magic of water

Two pictures showed up on my FB news feed this past week. One is this meme which has been around several times and which as a farm boy, still at heart, I have to agree with. The depth of the topsoil may vary as does the rainfall but without them we could not grow food. Agriculture and livestock production are merely the harnessing of these along with capturing sunlight to produce crops, meat and milk.

The other picture that caught my eye was this one of a swimmer just before breaking the surface tension of water. I found a couple more to go with it. Water is an amazing substance.  It is the stuff of life itself (without water you can't make coffee or whiskey but I digress). It was considered one of the four elements: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water.

The properties of water were covered in highschool and again in Chemistry 101 but after 55 years, I had to look it up again. Encyclopaedia Britannica to the rescue (https://www.britannica.com/science/water). Water (H2O) has an atomic weight of 18 and ought to be a gas with a boiling point of -100C. However hydrogen bonding gives water in all phases some very unique properties.

Ice floats on water, it does not sink, which is different from other solids which sink as the liquid turns solid. That means life is sustained beneath the ice in rivers, ponds and lakes that do not freeze to the bottom.

Water is as close to the universal solvent as one is likely to find.
In addition, the hundreds of chemical reactions that occur every instant to keep organisms alive all take place in aqueous fluids. Also, the ability of foods to be flavoured as they are cooked is made possible by the solubility in water of such substances as sugar and salt. Although the solubility of substances in water is an extremely complex process, the interaction between the polar water molecules and the solute (i.e., the substance being dissolved) plays a major role. When an ionic solid dissolves in water, the positive ends of the water molecules are attracted to the anions, while their negative ends are attracted to the cations. This process is called hydration. The hydration of its ions tends to cause a salt to break apart (dissolve) in the water. In the dissolving process the strong forces present between the positive and negative ions of the solid are replaced by strong water-ion interactions.

At high temperature and pressure, "supercritical" water will dissolve non-polar substances such as toxic wastes so they can be destroyed safely.

Far all chemistry nerds reading this, the Britannica article is not very long and well illustrated. For the rest, raise a glass of water and toast the magic of covalent bonding on which life as we know it depends.

Learning to Negotiate

Some people are born negotiators. My friend and mentor, the late Tim Marshall, was the best negotiator I ever met. He loved every minute of it and had both charm and patience to carry it off. We were in Beijing in the 90s when he decided to go to the area of the city that had antique shops to look for opium pipes and cricket cages which he collected. He soon found what he wanted in a tiny shop and the young woman who spoke good English gave him a price. It was insanely high. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I got bored and left but in an hour and a half Tim owned the antiques for the price he wanted to pay and a friend for life.

I am not a negotiator. If I consider a price reasonable and fair to both sides, I will take it. If not I will walk away. Whether I am buying or selling, the first offer is the final offer. Obviously this does not get one far in the real world, so I was sent to a Public Service Commission course on negotiation many years ago. All I remember is that one needed to get to win-win.

We had several chances to practice with set piece situations. The one that sticks in my mind went like this. Each person was given a piece of paper outlining the situation. We were paired with the person sitting beside us. A rare plant had been discovered in the high Andes with properties that indicated it could complete your companies quest for a cure for Alzheimer's. The company needs the ashes from burning 1 kg. You are flying to Lima to buy the only kg in existence. On the plane you are seated next to someone who turns out to be a competitor for the plant. Their company needs it to complete a cure for Lou Gehrig's Disease.  How do you negotiate with this person since there is only 1 kg available?

The person you are paired with has the same instructions BUT their company needs the smoke from burning the 1 kg of rare plant. Once you negotiate enough to find out that the needs are compatible, problem solved.

One of the participants in the course, sitting several seats down from me was a very attractive young woman in her late 20s who worked in PR for one of the Crowns, possibly SaskTel. When the instructor gave the signal to start negotiating, she smiled sweetly at her partner and began unbuttoning her blouse.

That pretty much destroyed the rest of the class.