Famous Oozes of History Trivia Quiz

Answer: La Brea Tar Pits

The La Brea Tar Pits are a collection of natural asphalt ooze situated in the middle of modern-day Los Angeles, which can't make death any easier for the mammoths trapped within. For tens of thousands of years, sticky black asphalt oozed up from the ground, trapping any unfortunate animal that wandered in looking for water or an easy meal. Predators followed prey, got stuck too, and the cycle repeated until the pits became a Season Highlights reel of Ice Age wildlife.

What makes La Brea cool-for people, anyway - is not just the number of fossils, but also the quality. Asphalt is excellent at preserving bones, so paleontologists have come across very detailed remains of dire wolves, saber toothed cats, ground sloths, mammoths, and a surprising number of very unlucky birds. Plants, insects, and even microbes are also preserved, providing scientists with a never-ending supply of new dead things to play with.

In spite of the name, the pits are not ACTUALLY tar. This is natural asphalt, which is thicker, stickier, and it seems very committed to ruining the day of an innocent Ice Age animal.

Answer: The Erfurt Latrine Disaster

Life is all fun and games until you fall into a giant stew of human waste while wearing armor. Yup. The Erfurt Latrine Disaster took place in 1184, likely at a building near Erfurt Cathedral (accounts vary on the exact building) in Erfurt. It happened during a formal meeting of nobles called there by His Majesty King Henry VI. The group gathered in an upper chamber without asking any basic structural questions such as whether the floor could support a room full of armored aristocrats. Funny thing, that. It couldn't. The floor collapsed, sending dozens of nobles plummeting into the cesspit below the room.

Accounts vary on the exact oozy death toll, with most settling on around 60. However, several prominent nobles drowned in human waste, which is not at all how medieval romance is supposed to work. King Henry VI survived, in a window alcove, but one can only imagine the embarrassment.

Answer: The London Beer Flood

The London Beer Flood occurred on October 17, 1814, at the Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery in the St. Giles part of London. One of the brewery's giant wooden vats holding porter burst open, releasing around 128,000-323,000 gallons (485- 1223 kL) of beer. The force was enough to knock down nearby vats as well, creating a giant wave of beer that smashed through brewery walls and poured into the surrounding neighborhood, perfectly describing how I want to die.

And speaking of, the flood killed at least eight people, most of them residents of nearby tenements, including a number who were attending a wake when the beer burst uninvited through the wall. The brewery itself was not punished, as the incident was essentially ruled an act of God. London rebuilt, breweries learned a few lessons, and vats slowly got less explosive.

Answer: The Great Stink of London

The Great Stink of London reached its oozy peak in the summer of 1858, when hot weather turned the River Thames into what one can only describe as a slow-moving open sewer. For decades, London had been dumping untreated human waste, animal remains, and industrial runoff straight into the river, which also happened to be the city's main water source, making it rather difficult to be a dignified Victorian under the circumstances.

The wretched smell disrupted the work of Parliament, conveniently located right next to the river. Curtains were soaked in chemicals and hung up in an attempt to block the odor, with mixed results. Newspapers described the stink in creative language, while doctors debated whether the air itself was killing people.

Ironically, the smell of heated raw sewage accomplished what years of death statistics had not. It forced the government to actually do something. Engineer Joseph Bazalgette was paid to design a massive modern sewer system that rerouted waste away from central London, proving that sometimes progress is fueled less by science and more by simple disgust.

Answer: Red Tide

Red tide is caused by blooms of microscopic algae (most commonly "Karenia brevis") in the Gulf of Mexico. These little guys produce potent toxins called brevetoxins, which are released into the water and the air when waves break. Our fishy friends absorb the toxins and die in huge numbers, often washing ashore in piles that make the problem hard to ignore.

Humans aren't off the hook either. Airborne toxins can irritate the eyes and lungs, triggering coughing, burning in the throat, and asthma attacks, even in people who never touch the water. Shellfish accumulate the toxins as well, leading to neurotoxic shellfish poisoning if eaten. This is the reason shellfish harvesting is often shut down during blooms, much to the annoyance of the seafood industry (and its fans).

It's a natural oozy phenomenon, but the problem is getting worse, with modern blooms tending to last longer and cause more headaches.

Answer: The Great Molasses Flood

The Great Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919, when a huge storage tank owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company burst open in Boston's North End. It sounds kind of fun, but the tank held roughly 2.3 million gallons (8.7 ML) of molasses, which burst outward and created a wave with a speed estimated to be up to 35 miles per hour (16 m/s). This was not a little drizzle of sweetness on your favorite dessert. This was a fast-moving wall of ooze that rocked buildings, bent steel beams, and knocked people and horses off their feet.

Twenty-one people were killed in the ooze and about 150 were injured. Many of the dead were trapped and suffocated as the molasses cooled and thickened. Rescuers worked with difficulty to get through streets that had turned into a gluey mess, with some victims so coated with the stuff they were difficult to recognize. The cleanup took weeks, with the help of saltwater from the harbor and a whole lot of shoveling. Local residents claimed the neighborhood smelled like molasses for years afterward, which sounds kind of pleasant until you remember why.

Answer: The Buffalo Creek Flood

The Buffalo Creek Flood happened on February 26, 1972, when a coal slurry dam collapsed in Logan County in West Virginia. The dam had held back waste from coal washing operations, and this waste was a thick black mixture of water, coal dust, and nasty chemicals. The dam was improperly constructed and predictably collapsed after heavy rain. A wall of sludge upwards of 30 feet (9m) high tore down Buffalo Creek hollow, destroying nearly everything in its path.

The flood killed 125 people, injured over a thousand, and left more than 4,000 residents homeless. Towns were wiped out in minutes. People described houses being lifted off their foundations and smashed apart like toys. The sludge moved quickly, gave little warning, and it coated the valley in toxic muck that took years to clean up.

Answer: The Seveso Disaster

The Seveso disaster occurred on July 10, 1976, near the town of Seveso in northern Italy, when a chemical reactor at a plant owned by ICMESA overheated and released a cloud of toxic chemicals into the air. The most dangerous substance in the mix was TCDD, a highly potent form of dioxin that you really don't want drifting through your neighborhood. The cloud settled over a number of towns, coating buildings, soil, animals, and people with an invisible but very serious problem.

In the following days, vegetation died, thousands of animals became sick or dropped dead, and residents began to develop chloracne, a severe and painful skin condition linked to dioxin exposure. Authorities eventually evacuated thousands of people and slaughtered thousands of animals to prevent the toxic substance from getting into the food chain and potentially causing more chaos.

The disaster directly led to the creation of the European Union's Seveso Directives, which regulate industrial facilities that handle dangerous substances, so if nothing else, it helped force governments to admit that maybe chemical plants should not rely on optimism alone as a safety strategy.

Answer: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill began on April 20, 2010, after an explosion on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion killed 11 workers and allowed oil to gush uncontrollably from the Macondo oil well nearly a mile below the ocean surface. The leak continued for 87 days, releasing an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, making it the largest marine oil spill in history.

The oil oozed across thousands of square miles, forming massive surface slicks and contaminating coastlines from Louisiana to Florida. Marine life was rocked by the disaster, with birds, sea turtles, dolphins, and fish exposed to toxic oil and chemical dispersants. Fisheries were shut down, tourists stopped coming for some reason, and cleanup crews spent years trying to undo the damage. It ended up costing BP tens of billions of dollars in fines, cleanup costs, and settlements.

Answer: Mount Polley Tailings Spill

The Mount Polley Tailings Spill occurred on August 4, 2014, when a tailings pond dam failed at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine in British Columbia. The disaster released about 25 billion liters of wastewater and mine tailings (the leftover ooze after extracting minerals from ore) into nearby Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, and Quesnel Lake. The gunk lined creek beds, uprooted forests, and turned clear waterways into a thick gray slurry.

No human lives were lost, but the environmental impact was severe. The spill dumped fine rock particles and metals such as arsenic, copper, and selenium into important freshwater ecosystems, including Quesnel Lake, one of the deepest fjord lakes in the world. Hazeltine Creek was a waste and had to be rebuilt from scratch, which is not a typical part of creek maintenance.