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Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents, and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and was patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. It allows the use of nitroglycerine's favorable explosive properties while greatly reducing its risk of accidental detonation.
An explosive is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.
Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula NH4NO3. It is a white crystalline salt consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is predominantly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer.
ANFO ( AN-foh) (or AN/FO, for ammonium nitrate/fuel oil) is a widely used bulk industrial explosive. It consists of 94% porous prilled ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) (AN), which acts as the oxidizing agent and absorbent for the fuel, and 6% number 2 fuel oil (FO). The use of ANFO originated in the 1950s.
The 1947 Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the port of Texas City, Texas, United States, located in Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.
On 21 September 2001, an explosion occurred at the AZF fertiliser factory in Toulouse, France, belonging to the Grande Paroisse branch of the Total group.
Mitchell Highway is an outback state highway located in the central and south western regions of Queensland and the northern and central western regions of New South Wales in Australia. The southern part of Mitchell Highway forms part of the National Highway A32 B71 corridor, which stretches from Sydney to Brisbane via Dubbo. Mitchell Highway also forms part of the shortest route between Sydney and Darwin, via Bourke and Mount Isa, making it an important road link for the transport of passengers and freight for regional New South Wales and Queensland. The highway is a part of route Alternative A2 between Augathella and Charleville, route A71 and B71 between Charleville and Nyngan, and part of route A32 between Nyngan and Bathurst.
The Ryongchŏn disaster was a train disaster that occurred on 22 April 2004 in the town of Ryongchŏn, North Korea, near the border with the People's Republic of China. At least 54 people were killed, including some Syrian scientists.
There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline, and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy defined by convention to be 4.184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton of TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, 4.184 kilojoules of energy are released.
Taroom is a town in the Shire of Banana and locality split between the Shire of Banana and the Western Downs Region in Queensland, Australia. At the 2016 census, Taroom had a population of 869 people.
Hassan Jandoubi was a French national of Tunisian parents, who died on 21 September 2001, in the AZF chemical factory explosion in Toulouse in south-western France. He was subsequently investigated by French anti-terrorist authorities as the prime suspect in the blast. An official enquiry later determined the blast was accidental, and not a result of Jandoubi's actions.
The 1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster was an explosion and fire that claimed many lives and destroyed several square miles of New Jersey factories. It began on March 1, 1924, about 11:15 a.m., when an explosion destroyed a building in Nixon, New Jersey used for processing ammonium nitrate. The explosion touched off fires in surrounding buildings in the Nixon Nitration Works that contained other highly flammable materials. The disaster killed twenty people, destroyed forty buildings, and demolished the "tiny industrial town of Nixon, New Jersey."
On April 17, 2013, an ammonium nitrate explosion occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, United States, while emergency services personnel were responding to a fire at the facility. Fifteen people were killed, more than 160 were injured, and more than 150 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Investigators confirmed that ammonium nitrate was the material that exploded. On May 11, 2016, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stated that the fire had been deliberately set. That finding has been disputed.
The Western railway line is a narrow gauge railway, connecting the south-east and south-west regions of Queensland, Australia. It commences at Toowoomba, at the end of the Main Line railway from Brisbane, and extends west 810 km to Cunnamulla, passing through the major towns of Dalby, Roma and Charleville, although services on the 184 km section from Westgate to Cunnamulla have been suspended since 2011. The Queensland Government was the first railway operator in the world to adopt narrow gauge for a main line, and this remains the system-wide gauge.
On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions at the Port of Tianjin in Tianjin, Northern China, killed 173 people, according to official reports, and injured hundreds of others. The explosions occurred at a container storage station in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, China. The first two explosions occurred 33 seconds apart. The second explosion was much larger and involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Fires caused by the initial explosions continued to burn uncontrolled throughout the weekend, resulting in eight additional explosions on 15 August.
Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (DFPCL) is an Indian manufacturer of industrial and agricultural chemicals, crop nutrients, and fertilisers.
On 4 August 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut in the capital city of Lebanon exploded, causing at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and US$15 billion in property damage, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of the substance had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years after having been confiscated by Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus. The explosion was preceded by a fire in the same warehouse.
MV Rhosus was a general cargo ship that was abandoned in Beirut, Lebanon, after the ship was declared unseaworthy and the charterers lost interest in the cargo. The 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which the ship was carrying was confiscated and brought to shore in 2014, and later contributed to the catastrophic 2020 Beirut explosion. The vessel's owner at the time of abandonment was Cyprus-based Russian businessman Igor Grechushkin. The ship sank in the Port of Beirut in 2018.
References
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- 1 2 3 4 "Ronald Holzberger, Evan & Douglas Becker". Monument Australia. 30 March 2013. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
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- 1 2 "Death blast a mystery - expert". The Sydney Morning Herald . 1 September 1972. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mackay, Jacquie (4 April 2013). "Truck explosion memorial unveiled (radio interview with Owen Becker)". ABC Capricornia . Archived from the original on 2016-11-11. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
- ↑ "Fire blamed". The Canberra Times. 2 September 1972. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
- 1 2 Atkins, Mary Winifred (2019). From The Earth: My Life. Kurt Owen Print Publications. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-0-646-99875-6.
- 1 2 Edwards, Alyse (7 September 2014). "Investigators gain access to ammonium nitrate truck explosion site near Charleville in south-west Qld". ABC News . Retrieved 29 May 2021.
- ↑ Calcino, Chris (9 September 2014). "What is this happened in Toowoomba?". The Chronicle . Archived from the original on 2021-05-29. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
- ↑ Smith-Spark, Laura; Kiley, Sam; Picheta, Rob (6 August 2020). "Ammonium nitrate may have sparked the Beirut explosion". CNN News . Retrieved 29 May 2021.