The city of London sought in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that scorched the metropolis. An even more repellent force infested its very heart: the River Thames. Years of industrial effluents had transformed London's lifeblood into a nauseating odor. The stench was oppressive, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone and in

On a blustery morning in that fateful year, disaster befell Boston. A massive tank filled with sticky, sweet molasses gave way sending a wall of of the thick liquid crashing through the streets. The force was catastrophic, flattening buildings and entombing residents in a treacly soup. Scores of people were lost their lives, and many more suffere