What Was the Great Molasses Flood of 1919?By: Kirsten Anderson, Who HQ Illustrator: Dede Putra Series: What Was? The unbelievable true story of one of the strangest disasters in historypart of the New York Times bestselling What Was? series, featuring 16 pages of photos. On an unusually warm winter day in Boston, Massachusetts, a storage tank in the city's North End burst, flooding the neighborhood with 2. 3 million gallons of molasses. The Red Cross, the Army, the Navy, and the Massachusetts