{"id":5114,"date":"2014-09-17T21:03:01","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5114"},"modified":"2014-09-17T21:03:01","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T02:03:01","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-september-17-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5114","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for September 17, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Freshly Varnished Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The steamboat\u00a0<em>Erie\u00a0<\/em>left Buffalo, New York, for Chicago on August 9, 1841 with a fresh coat of paint and varnish on the outside. \u00a0But inside in its boiler room a disaster was waiting to happen: containers of inflammable turpentine had been stowed there, close to the hot boilers. \u00a0When the turpentine finally exploded, the ship&#8217;s fresh paint and varnish caught fire immediately, spreading the flames in all directions like traces of gunpowder. \u00a0The ship&#8217;s 250-plus passengers desperately tried to escape as the fire engulfed the steamboat. \u00a0Well over a hundred immigrant passengers crowding the ship&#8217;s steerage section were probably trapped there and burned alive. \u00a0Lifeboats were swamped as other, now hysterical passengers on deck overloaded them. \u00a0Some of these people were drawn into the still-turning paddle wheels. \u00a0Others jumped straight into the choppy waters and survived by clinging to pieces of floating debris until help arrived. \u00a0By then, however, the disaster had killed some 242 people.<\/p>\n<p>Culled from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/006095745X\/theasylumeclecti\">The Pessimist\u2019s Guide To History<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Freshly Varnished Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The steamboat\u00a0Erie\u00a0left Buffalo, New York, for Chicago on August 9, 1841 with a fresh coat of paint and varnish on the outside. \u00a0But inside in its boiler room a disaster was waiting to happen: containers of inflammable turpentine had been stowed there, close to the hot boilers. \u00a0When [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5115,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5114\/revisions\/5115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}