This week marks 100 years since an unimaginable disaster struck in Boston, when millions of gallons of molasses burst out of a giant, rickety tank by the harbor and gushed into the North End.

What makes the Great Molasses Flood one of history’s strangest disasters? A tank explosion sent a tsunami of sticky syrup through Boston, causing destruction and chaos. But was it preventable?

The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, took place almost 100 years ago, but in the past week a team of Harvard researchers shared some of their findings from ...