This 100-year-old explosion completely dwarfs the 'mother of all bombs' blast
DoD Photo
On April 13, the US military dropped the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal on an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan.
Nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs" (but officially called the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb), the 30-foot-long munition allegedly crushed a network of caves, tunnels, and bunkers dug into a remote mountainside.
The strike was akin to setting off about 11 tons of TNT — a school bus' weight worth of explosives.
However, the attack pales in comparison to an accidental explosion that rocked a coastal town nearly three decades before the first atomic bomb.
On the morning of December 6, 1917, a ship detonated in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, unleashing a blast equivalent to about 3,000 tons of TNT.
The resulting shockwave instantly killed more than 1,000 people, threw a cargo ship like a bath toy, and created a 50-foot-tall tidal wave.
This is the incredible and horrifying story of the Halifax Explosion: the largest human-made blast in history before the advent of nuclear weapons.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also: