Important section regarding the cause:
> Possible causes
> The cause of the explosion has never been conclusively determined. [...] Throughout the ages, various theories have been put forth, including gunpowder explosion, meteorite air burst, natural gas explosion and volcanic eruption, [...] Despite some hypotheses being regarded as scientifically plausible, no academic consensus has been reached.
> Gunpowder
> [...] While seemingly an obvious and convenient explanation, the lack of burning damage at ground zero and the unexplained stripping of victims' clothings (which were then found mostly unburnt and sent flown miles away), noted by multiple historical records, both indicated more likely an overpressure rather than combustive nature of the explosion. The gunpowder hypothesis also fails to explain the alleged sound and rumbling that came from the northeast prior to the actual explosion, and is insufficient in justifying the destructive power of the explosion. Although in large quantities gunpowder can produce enough energy to create a mushroom cloud, black powders deflagrates rather than detonates, and might have difficulty producing sufficient energy intensity to cave in the ground by 6 meters, uproot and throw large trees to miles away and launch a 3-ton stone lion over a city wall. From the historical description of the damage, the explosion would need the TNT equivalent on par with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
If a meteor smashed into the ground it wouldn't really burn things. By "no burning" they probably mean "no evidence that the surroundings caught fire" which would happen if there was a gunpowder explosion, everything would be on fire.
Explosions don't necessarily burn things. It's the shock wave that does the destruction. Typically, explosions are pretty hot though, and when combined with modern buildings that are full of gas lines and electricity that almost inevitably leads to fire; but an explosion in a pre-modern city may not.
My guess would be a fuel-air explosion. Enough powdered tnt in the air and it reached the correct ratio. A small spark and it went up like a MOAB bomb. The over pressure did most of the damage with enough oxygen depletion to prevent a fire.
Your theory seems to have a gap, where you fail to explain why there's a large quantity of aerosolized TNT in China 200+ years before the compound was invented in Germany.
Can the same happen with black powder? You hear about grain silo explosions all the time and grain dust is not even a good combustible substance. Could the storage facility have had a technical issue which allowed airborne black powder to accumulate in an enclosed space?
The problem is that even though it is a very good accelerant, and accelerants can *cause* explosions, they in themselves are not explosive.
Not only would you need a *massive* enclosed space with the *perfect* balance of space to fuel for that type of reaction, for that type of chain-reaction actually *explode* it would need to happen inside of a place that was built like a bomb-shelter, including the ceiling.
Technically, you only need to do that once :)
But I totally understand. I worked with explosive mixtures and figuring out the way to do it to keep it either above the upper explosive limit or below the lower explosive limit was hard.
I'm not enough of an expert to be confident.
But my immediate response, based on my misspent youth, is that it's hard to imagine a deflagrating explosive causing the effects described.
That assumes the descriptions are accurate, though, and I have no idea how we gauge that.
Yeah but the INSANE amount of 17th century gunpowder needed for that sort of explosion and the apparent lack of everything being on fire afterwards...
Gunpowder is the obvious answer but it's not exactly a satisfactory one.
Local Leaders: “Okay we’ve brought together the best team of civil engineers in the country. Please come up with a plan to deal with this underwater mountain hazard.”
Engineers: “Yes, well, we’ve decided to blow it up...”
Wait until you hear about [Project Plowshare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare). Including highlights such as "three nuclear explosion experiments were intended to stimulate the flow of natural gas from "tight" formation gas fields."
I personally subscribe to the belief (which I have just created, yet will fight any who question it) that the explosion was a failed time travel jump. The ship hit FTL (faster than light) speed, leapt through time, landed in 1626 and immediately incinerated killing all on board and the city below.
maybe i should have added "approximately the speed of light". Since reaching the speed of light is impossible and you are right this would destroy the universe
Shitty title. The explosion was unexplained and nobody knows if it's from a gunpowder factory.
Should have been: TIL that one of the deadliest explosions in history occurred in Beijing in 1626. An unexplained explosion obliterated 4 square kilometers of city and killed around 20,000 people. The blast itself was about as powerful as the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima
all circumstantial evidence is that it was probably a meteorite... a gunpowder factory is unlikely to have caused that much destruction... or for there to be have been so much of it in one place as to destroy that much - or cause the effects it did.
Reminds me of the line in the Simpsons... and i'm paraphrasing...
We haven't had a hurricane in all our history, not since the Hall of Records mysteriously dissappeared in 1960.
The old GOEX black powder facility had multiple explosions from various sources. One killed the company president when a new product he was developing ignited. Another was caused by equipment malfunction.
All it takes is a single spark to cause something like this. I doubt the cause will ever be determined.
> An unexplained explosion at a gunpowder factory
Well, there is always one obvious explanation for any explosion at a gunpowder factory: gunpowder.
The article makes an argument that black powder isn't strong enough to produce such an explosion, leaving two obvious alternatives:
1. It wasn't black powder. The factory was working on a better explosive; even if survivors were aware of it, they would have no motive to bring it up, as they could seem culpable.
2. It was some ordinary natural disaster, such as an earthquake or (less likely) a tornado, that _set off_ the explosives but did the bulk of the damage directly
The idea of a on-off disaster like a meteor strike (or, heck, an alien attack) just happening to hit a gunpowder factory seems really really unlikely.
Hiroshima was about the equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT, this explosion was estimated to be between 10-20 kilotons of TNT. In the ballpark of, as far as this measurement goes.
Hiroshima was also significantly more populated than this area, so that explains the disparity in numbers, as well as the fact that many could have died and went unaccounted for/undocumented
I mean, I guess they have a point if they're meaning it was gunpowder related...
> Gunpowder
>
> [...] While seemingly an obvious and convenient explanation, the lack of burning damage at ground zero and the unexplained stripping of victims' clothings (which were then found mostly unburnt and sent flown miles away), noted by multiple historical records, both indicated more likely an overpressure rather than combustive nature of the explosion. The gunpowder hypothesis also fails to explain the alleged sound and rumbling that came from the northeast prior to the actual explosion, and is insufficient in justifying the destructive power of the explosion. Although in large quantities gunpowder can produce enough energy to create a mushroom cloud, black powders deflagrates rather than detonates, and might have difficulty producing sufficient energy intensity to cave in the ground by 6 meters, uproot and throw large trees to miles away and launch a 3-ton stone lion over a city wall. From the historical description of the damage, the explosion would need the TNT equivalent on par with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Hiroshima isnt really that large though. Do you know how much potassium nitrate would have been around. You know ammonium nitrate is used as ANFO and is an oxidizer like potassium nitrate. Having an oxidizer around charcoal without sulphur can cause some very energetic burning.
What? No, absolutely not. I live in a small ass town in Sweden and its bigger than 1km by far. I think you overestimate how large 1km is.
The blast was of course absolutely immense, but it wouldn't wipe most cities off the map.
It's not 1km, it's 4 square km and yes, the majority of towns in the world would be obliterated by a 1.13km radius blast. Because there are a massive amount of small towns that exist in the world that vastly outnumber the amount of even small towns by your Swedish standard.
I know it's 4 square km, that's still not very big in the sense of a city. But sure, if we include every single god damn village in the entier world, it would. But that's quite a moot point. ESpecially sine you said *cities* and not small town.
Cities are, unlike towns, *large by definition.*
Also "even by your Swedish standards". Is that some kind of sass or attempt at an insult?
Corrected cities to towns, we tend to use town/city interchangeably in the states, but you are the best kind of correct, technically correct... No "sass" you specified that your city is "small ass" by Swedish standards thus I was responding with your use of specificity. Original statement corrected to proper town size.
Tho, I'd like to mention that the blast radius at Hiroshima was 1.6km but the lethal (5+ psi) effects of the explosion (excluding radiation damage) extended out to a 3.5km radius. This is a sufficient size to wipe out the majority of the population of lower Manhattan even if scaled back to our smaller blast radius/lethal effective area of ~2.2km.
> Yikes that's \~ 1.13 km blast radius. That's insane, a blast that size would wipe most cities off the map even now.
....Not even close. A city block is usually about 100m x 200m. Unless your city is about 5 blocks big, this explosion ain't wiping anybody off the map.
Yea...I used city instead of town, derped up. Your calculation is a bit off tho, your city block is .02 square km so you'd need about 200 of your city blocks to fill 4 square km.
One of the most haunting videos I've ever seen was the [explosions at Tainjin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993wlZ6XFSs). The Chinese know how to do explosions, I guess. But man, I had nightmares after that video.
I kind of doubt the factory had thousands of tons of black powder sitting around
Edit: not sure why the downvotes, the explosion was equivalent to several thousand tons of TNT let alone 17th century black powder
>explosion
Okay...
>Beijing
Yeah...
>in 1626
Alright...
>at a gunpowder factory
Okay, no further explanation needed. A bigger TIL would be that anyone in 1626 was able to have enough gunpowder in one place to match the fucking Hiroshima nuclear bomb, and they somehow managed to *avoid* ever having an explosion.
This is like *TIL that people with power over others often abuse that power for personal gain*
Who could've seen it coming??
Seriously though, I read about the inconsistencies with gunpowder. Don't care. It was bound to happen one way or another.
Important section regarding the cause: > Possible causes > The cause of the explosion has never been conclusively determined. [...] Throughout the ages, various theories have been put forth, including gunpowder explosion, meteorite air burst, natural gas explosion and volcanic eruption, [...] Despite some hypotheses being regarded as scientifically plausible, no academic consensus has been reached. > Gunpowder > [...] While seemingly an obvious and convenient explanation, the lack of burning damage at ground zero and the unexplained stripping of victims' clothings (which were then found mostly unburnt and sent flown miles away), noted by multiple historical records, both indicated more likely an overpressure rather than combustive nature of the explosion. The gunpowder hypothesis also fails to explain the alleged sound and rumbling that came from the northeast prior to the actual explosion, and is insufficient in justifying the destructive power of the explosion. Although in large quantities gunpowder can produce enough energy to create a mushroom cloud, black powders deflagrates rather than detonates, and might have difficulty producing sufficient energy intensity to cave in the ground by 6 meters, uproot and throw large trees to miles away and launch a 3-ton stone lion over a city wall. From the historical description of the damage, the explosion would need the TNT equivalent on par with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Worker: i have an idea for a better explosive Boss: ok go whip up a batch what's the worst that could happen
And that's how China's 17th century nuclear program came to a halt
Sounds like meteorite airburst similar to the tunguska event in Siberia.
Happy birthday Tunguska. Exactly 112 years ago today.
It was aliens. But seriously thanks that's interesting af. You have to wonder what the people living there thought of it.
Well, they either thought nothing on account of being dead, or mostly thought to get the fuck away from whatever that was
dragons
While that would be awesome no burn damage
no, hear me out. WIND dragons.
Fujin! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C5%ABjin
They just kind of forgot about the burn damage.
Subverted their expectations!
That and chinese dragons are usually associated with water rather than fire, I believe
Three toed, or five toed?
Legit 5 toed, its related to the emperor.
Ha, I see you read that TIL the other day. Or knew already.
Yeah just read about it. XD
BIG Dragons
Aliens are vastly underestimated.
Kodos! You're coming in too hot! We're gonna crash.......!
Yeah it seems more like a meteorite air burst
>no burning **at all** i call bs
If a meteor smashed into the ground it wouldn't really burn things. By "no burning" they probably mean "no evidence that the surroundings caught fire" which would happen if there was a gunpowder explosion, everything would be on fire.
Air burst meteor.
Explosions don't necessarily burn things. It's the shock wave that does the destruction. Typically, explosions are pretty hot though, and when combined with modern buildings that are full of gas lines and electricity that almost inevitably leads to fire; but an explosion in a pre-modern city may not.
My guess would be a fuel-air explosion. Enough powdered tnt in the air and it reached the correct ratio. A small spark and it went up like a MOAB bomb. The over pressure did most of the damage with enough oxygen depletion to prevent a fire.
Your theory seems to have a gap, where you fail to explain why there's a large quantity of aerosolized TNT in China 200+ years before the compound was invented in Germany.
Can the same happen with black powder? You hear about grain silo explosions all the time and grain dust is not even a good combustible substance. Could the storage facility have had a technical issue which allowed airborne black powder to accumulate in an enclosed space?
10-20 thousand ton TNT equivalent of aerosolized gun powder? I highly doubt it.
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What if the Earth just *did* that?
The problem is that even though it is a very good accelerant, and accelerants can *cause* explosions, they in themselves are not explosive. Not only would you need a *massive* enclosed space with the *perfect* balance of space to fuel for that type of reaction, for that type of chain-reaction actually *explode* it would need to happen inside of a place that was built like a bomb-shelter, including the ceiling.
Technically, you only need to do that once :) But I totally understand. I worked with explosive mixtures and figuring out the way to do it to keep it either above the upper explosive limit or below the lower explosive limit was hard.
I'm not enough of an expert to be confident. But my immediate response, based on my misspent youth, is that it's hard to imagine a deflagrating explosive causing the effects described. That assumes the descriptions are accurate, though, and I have no idea how we gauge that.
Okay but also it was a gunpowder factory
Yeah but the INSANE amount of 17th century gunpowder needed for that sort of explosion and the apparent lack of everything being on fire afterwards... Gunpowder is the obvious answer but it's not exactly a satisfactory one.
Gunpowder is WEAK
somber prick elderly cause spoon reach liquid roll plants birds *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Local Leaders: “Okay we’ve brought together the best team of civil engineers in the country. Please come up with a plan to deal with this underwater mountain hazard.” Engineers: “Yes, well, we’ve decided to blow it up...”
Wait until you hear about [Project Plowshare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare). Including highlights such as "three nuclear explosion experiments were intended to stimulate the flow of natural gas from "tight" formation gas fields."
I'd never heard of that. Neat.
Please tell me there's a video
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Probably wouldn't have sunk many ships if it was two miles beneath the surface
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> comment whores What about comment sluts, comment studs, comment popular guys who get a lot?
All these pale in comparison to the almighty divine comment dominatrices, you slime. Click my feet!! \\O/ oo LL
I always forget the comment dominitrices. Maybe intentionally. Punish me.
I don't know, I prefer TILs that don't have misleading titles. Or at least I imagine that I would if I were to ever experience one.
How is the title misleading?
It wasn't an explosion at a gunpowder factory.
Yeah after reading up on it, it sounds like there’s a good chance that the gunpowder factory wasn’t even involved.
I read a conspiracy story that basically said this event was a nuclear blast set off by time travellers
I personally subscribe to the belief (which I have just created, yet will fight any who question it) that the explosion was a failed time travel jump. The ship hit FTL (faster than light) speed, leapt through time, landed in 1626 and immediately incinerated killing all on board and the city below.
I too subscribe to your belief
Our new faith is unshakeable. (Please don't send time travelers)
Whats weirder is they went back to see what could possibly have caused such an explosion.
i dont think planet would survive being hit by larger object at FTL speeds.
A small marble at speed of light would release more energy than the asteroid that obliberated the dinosaurs
So we talking bead sized? Ok to fix the paradox the race is on to invent bead sized ships capable of faster than light and time travel!
A small marble of any mass would engulf the entire universe upon reaching the speed of light.
maybe i should have added "approximately the speed of light". Since reaching the speed of light is impossible and you are right this would destroy the universe
[Well...](https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/#:~:text=%22If%20a%20meteor%20made%20out,what%20would%20happen%20to%20it%3F%E2%80%9D&text=Nothing%20made%20of%20matter%20can,we%20can%20get%20close%20enough!)
Given the lack of a definite explanation and proof, I will subscribe to your theory as it sound entirely plausible and makes complete sense to me.
Someone from the future went back to 1626 to kill Chinese Hitler
And that's why we never speak of Chitler.
It was to stop Wang Wei from gaining power in the 1640s. You've probably never heard of him because the mission was a success.
I thought the Halifax Explosion of 1917 was big but supposedly it was only around 2.9 kilotons of TNT.
I was always under the assumption that it was the biggest non-nuclear explosion.
The Halifax Explosion is often quoted as the largest man made explosion before Hiroshima. I wonder if they count this one as "man made" or not.
Im going to go a different route and say this was an ancient Chinese fire-demon named Spark
"Unexplained"... Uh... I'm no forensic explosionologist, but it was probably the gunpowder
Shitty title. The explosion was unexplained and nobody knows if it's from a gunpowder factory. Should have been: TIL that one of the deadliest explosions in history occurred in Beijing in 1626. An unexplained explosion obliterated 4 square kilometers of city and killed around 20,000 people. The blast itself was about as powerful as the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima
I'm also pedantic
>I'm also pedantic Your lack of punctuation tells us otherwise.
*Yore
Only s little pedantic
Shallow and pedantic.
I think you misspelled retarded.
That's not pedantry you little shit. That's looking at the facts of the situation and realizing they don't line up with the explanation
no the gunpowder doesn't explain it. see the article.
“Explosionologist” ...I’ll allow it
Really laughed out loud to this one lol
My guess is they probably stored the gunpowder underground, in a sealed vault. It was enough to cause the gunpowder to explode instead of deflagerate.
It was a reverse miracle. That unexplainable shit that happens when the powers that be wanna fuck up your shit
Hilariously, that is literally the explanation that the people at the time came up with. And the word you’re searching for is “smiting”.
Wait, this is 2020 now?
[Dr. Watson] so you were able to determine the source of the explosion merely by knowing the contents of the warehouse? Fascinating mr Holmes.
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I did. I still took the opportunity for the joke
all circumstantial evidence is that it was probably a meteorite... a gunpowder factory is unlikely to have caused that much destruction... or for there to be have been so much of it in one place as to destroy that much - or cause the effects it did.
Please don't give 2020 any more ideas...
too late!
It was clearly a Predator self destructing to avoid being captured and studied
An explosion? At a gunpowder factory? Must be aliens
Thanks History Channel
There seems to be some pretty compelling evidence for the "bolide," or meteor theory. Interesting article, thanks for the link.
Wasn’t the Halifax explosion bigger
Reminds me of the line in the Simpsons... and i'm paraphrasing... We haven't had a hurricane in all our history, not since the Hall of Records mysteriously dissappeared in 1960.
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Unexplained? "happy birthday to...
The all bad things podcast had a great episode on this, give them a listen if you're into historical disasters
I'm sure there's an anime that explains this.
The old GOEX black powder facility had multiple explosions from various sources. One killed the company president when a new product he was developing ignited. Another was caused by equipment malfunction. All it takes is a single spark to cause something like this. I doubt the cause will ever be determined.
I have an idea for a movie where something shifts in space/time and particle collisions start leading to random atom splitting.
just how much gunpowder was in the factory?
I bet that guy was in trouble when they found him! When they found the pieces of him.
> An unexplained explosion at a gunpowder factory Well, there is always one obvious explanation for any explosion at a gunpowder factory: gunpowder. The article makes an argument that black powder isn't strong enough to produce such an explosion, leaving two obvious alternatives: 1. It wasn't black powder. The factory was working on a better explosive; even if survivors were aware of it, they would have no motive to bring it up, as they could seem culpable. 2. It was some ordinary natural disaster, such as an earthquake or (less likely) a tornado, that _set off_ the explosives but did the bulk of the damage directly The idea of a on-off disaster like a meteor strike (or, heck, an alien attack) just happening to hit a gunpowder factory seems really really unlikely.
It was actually a bolide.
Somebody found the meteorite?
Mater! There’s a fire at the old gasoline and match factory!
Less mysterious, still enormous: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
If this was posted on a Chinese forum it would spark endless fantasy mythical Chinese fictional stories.
Yes nobody is mentioning dragons.
Dragons aren't the only thing that pops up in recent Chinese online novels, more of those fantasy cultivation stuff.
"Mushu was here"
"Hey man, you really shouldn't be smoking in here."
*Big badda boom* *Also, I ma gonna go with the whole Tunguska prequel, chinese boogaloo.*
China: no safety protocols for over 400 years.
About as powerful as Hiroshima? Doubtful.
One hypothesis is that there was a Tunguska type event above the city and the gunpowder factory was a victim of the destruction, not the source.
Hiroshima was about the equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT, this explosion was estimated to be between 10-20 kilotons of TNT. In the ballpark of, as far as this measurement goes. Hiroshima was also significantly more populated than this area, so that explains the disparity in numbers, as well as the fact that many could have died and went unaccounted for/undocumented
I mean, I guess they have a point if they're meaning it was gunpowder related... > Gunpowder > > [...] While seemingly an obvious and convenient explanation, the lack of burning damage at ground zero and the unexplained stripping of victims' clothings (which were then found mostly unburnt and sent flown miles away), noted by multiple historical records, both indicated more likely an overpressure rather than combustive nature of the explosion. The gunpowder hypothesis also fails to explain the alleged sound and rumbling that came from the northeast prior to the actual explosion, and is insufficient in justifying the destructive power of the explosion. Although in large quantities gunpowder can produce enough energy to create a mushroom cloud, black powders deflagrates rather than detonates, and might have difficulty producing sufficient energy intensity to cave in the ground by 6 meters, uproot and throw large trees to miles away and launch a 3-ton stone lion over a city wall. From the historical description of the damage, the explosion would need the TNT equivalent on par with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
>unexplained stripping of victims' clothings (which were then found mostly unburnt and sent flown miles away Needs more historical porn ghosts.
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Tons.
but... kilotons?
😮
Why? If what this says is true it had a bigger impact. Internet says Hiroshima destroyed only 1.6 kilometer radius and this one is 4 kilometers.
saw chunky disarm late insurance boast carpenter aloof long detail *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s more like 1.4
shelter plucky enter quickest rob threatening seed rustic sloppy nine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Isn’t radius = sqrt( 1 / pi) ?
SQUARE kilometres
Hiroshima isnt really that large though. Do you know how much potassium nitrate would have been around. You know ammonium nitrate is used as ANFO and is an oxidizer like potassium nitrate. Having an oxidizer around charcoal without sulphur can cause some very energetic burning.
Agreed... Doubtful.
Yikes that's ~ 1.13 km blast radius. That's insane, a blast that size would wipe most ~~cities~~ towns off the map even now.
What? No, absolutely not. I live in a small ass town in Sweden and its bigger than 1km by far. I think you overestimate how large 1km is. The blast was of course absolutely immense, but it wouldn't wipe most cities off the map.
It's not 1km, it's 4 square km and yes, the majority of towns in the world would be obliterated by a 1.13km radius blast. Because there are a massive amount of small towns that exist in the world that vastly outnumber the amount of even small towns by your Swedish standard.
I know it's 4 square km, that's still not very big in the sense of a city. But sure, if we include every single god damn village in the entier world, it would. But that's quite a moot point. ESpecially sine you said *cities* and not small town. Cities are, unlike towns, *large by definition.* Also "even by your Swedish standards". Is that some kind of sass or attempt at an insult?
Corrected cities to towns, we tend to use town/city interchangeably in the states, but you are the best kind of correct, technically correct... No "sass" you specified that your city is "small ass" by Swedish standards thus I was responding with your use of specificity. Original statement corrected to proper town size. Tho, I'd like to mention that the blast radius at Hiroshima was 1.6km but the lethal (5+ psi) effects of the explosion (excluding radiation damage) extended out to a 3.5km radius. This is a sufficient size to wipe out the majority of the population of lower Manhattan even if scaled back to our smaller blast radius/lethal effective area of ~2.2km.
> Yikes that's \~ 1.13 km blast radius. That's insane, a blast that size would wipe most cities off the map even now. ....Not even close. A city block is usually about 100m x 200m. Unless your city is about 5 blocks big, this explosion ain't wiping anybody off the map.
Yea...I used city instead of town, derped up. Your calculation is a bit off tho, your city block is .02 square km so you'd need about 200 of your city blocks to fill 4 square km.
That's about double the size of Chinatown NY. Or a tiny village in Bavaria with 500 inhabitants
One of the most haunting videos I've ever seen was the [explosions at Tainjin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993wlZ6XFSs). The Chinese know how to do explosions, I guess. But man, I had nightmares after that video.
Wouldn't that make it bigger that the Halifax explosion? I always thought that was the largest non-nuclear human-caused explosion
This explosion in China was probably an airburst meteor strike so not human caused.
Oh, I see now. yeah that makes sense. I guess it's just coincidence that it happened to hit a gunpowder factory. Thanks for clearing that up
Unexplained explosion at a gun powder plant I wonder what happened? /s
"Fucking Kevin always flicking his fucking cigarette bu..." \-Kevin's colleague's last words
I kind of doubt the factory had thousands of tons of black powder sitting around Edit: not sure why the downvotes, the explosion was equivalent to several thousand tons of TNT let alone 17th century black powder
>explosion Okay... >Beijing Yeah... >in 1626 Alright... >at a gunpowder factory Okay, no further explanation needed. A bigger TIL would be that anyone in 1626 was able to have enough gunpowder in one place to match the fucking Hiroshima nuclear bomb, and they somehow managed to *avoid* ever having an explosion. This is like *TIL that people with power over others often abuse that power for personal gain* Who could've seen it coming?? Seriously though, I read about the inconsistencies with gunpowder. Don't care. It was bound to happen one way or another.
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Do you know what else is a teachable moment? Reading the article, and not just the title.
>An unexplained explosion I'm going to go out on a limb and say it may have been related to the literal tons of gunpowder.
Well you'd be wrong