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Rotten History - April 22 2017

On This Day in Rotten History...

In 1915 – (102 years ago) – as World War I combatants faced off in the late afternoon near the hamlet of Gravenstafel in western Belgium, the German troops released more than 170 tons of chlorine gas that swept in a thick yellow cloud over the opposing front line of French and colonial Moroccan and Algerian soldiers. Being heavier than air, the gas quickly settled into the trenches, killing hundreds of French troops within minutes, and forcing thousands more to come staggering out into the open, gasping and choking in agony, as they were mowed down in a barrage of German gunfire. The Germans relied on prevailing winds to carry the gas away from themselves and toward their enemies, but many of them were also killed and injured by their own weapon. As fighting continued over the following weeks, the French troops tried to protect themselves by urinating into handkerchiefs which they tied over their faces, so that the ammonia in their urine could neutralize the chlorine poison. Months would go by before they were issued proper gas masks. More than 120,000 troops were killed or wounded or went missing in this bloodbath, known as the Second Battle of Ypres. The British, French, and Americans all expressed outrage at what they called the Germans’ cowardly form of warfare — but by the end of the war, they too had built up stockpiles of chemical weapons, and had used them.

In 1992 – (25 years ago) – residents in a central section of Guadalajara, Mexico, awoke to a heavy, nauseating stink that had risen from manholes in their streets for several days. The people also noticed that the water from their faucets smelled like gasoline, and caused stinging in the eyes and throat. Shortly after 10 a.m. that day came the first of a series of sewer explosions that continued for hours — blowing up streets, destroying buildings, throwing cars into the air, and starting fires that burned all day. Amid the panic and chaos of the emergency evacuation, firefighters warned people across the city not to strike matches or light their stoves. Residents in unaffected neighborhoods hurried to remove manhole covers, hoping that any gas in their sewers would escape without igniting. By the time the crisis was over, up to a thousand people were dead, hundreds more were injured or missing, and some fifteen thousand people were left homeless. Authorities later blamed the state-owned petroleum company Pemex for allowing gasoline to flow into the sewer system. Pemex executives, meanwhile, blamed a local manufacturer of cooking oil for dumping flammable hexane into the sewers.

Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi

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