This is an insane piece of history about a horrible cargo ship fail. It’s the story of the SS Grandcamp causing the Texas City Disaster. It exploded in 1947 because the ship was loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer (among other things). The disaster killed 576 people and injured some 4,000 others.
As someone else on this thread added, a second boat named the SS Highflyer exploded in a very similar manner the next day. It was an even more violent explosion, but was less devastating because most of the port was already leveled and evacuated. After the first boat exploded someone noticed that the second boat’s cargo was on fire and reported it. This just went ignored for several hours. So the next day it started raining glowing-hot metal boat chunks all over the city. Again.
