LONDON'S RIVER TURNED MURKY: A SUMMER OF FILTH, 1858

The city of London breathed in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that baked the metropolis. An even more repellent force infested its very heart: the River Thames. Years of industrial waste had transformed London's lifeblood into a foul-smelling mire. The stench was all-consuming, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone and s

On a blustery January in that fateful year, disaster unfolded Boston. A massive reservoir filled with sticky, sweet molasses gave way sending a tidal wave of the thick liquid rushing through the streets. The power was catastrophic, flattening buildings and trapping people in a gooey mire. Hundreds of people were killed, and many more suffered. Bo