A guide to Boston's historic secrets, mysteries and scandals

One of the worst disasters to hit Boston wasn't an earthquake or a tornado... it was a flood. Of molasses. In 1919, a tank of molasses (for fermentation into rum) collapsed at the Purity Distillery in Boston's North End. The tank contained 2,300,000 gallons of sticky sweet liquid, and a 25-foot tall wave was unleashed, rolling down the street at 35 MPH. A railroad car was tipped off its track. Buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. People, horses, dogs and debris were picked up and thrown several feet. All in all, 150 people were injured, and 21 people were killed in the molasses tidal wave. It took weeks to complete the immediate cleanup (they used sand to soak up the mess, and hosed everything down with water), and even longer to ensure that molasses tracked down streets and into subways was clear. The water in the harbor was brown for months, and some claimed that for years after, on a hot summer day, the smell of sweet, spiced molasses would hang in the air.

Ok, so this is a Chipotle... but it's a secretly really cool Chipotle. The building that houses it is one of the oldest buildings in Boston and it has a legendary history. It was once home to Anne Hutchinson, who was famously expelled from Massachusetts in 1638 for heresy-- after that, the building became a bookstore and publisher that's credited for giving the world gems like "The Scarlet Letter", "Walden", and the Atlantic Monthly Magazine.

There are several reasons why the Harvard Bridge is so special. For starters, it was the first structure ever measured in Smoots. In 1958, frat brothers at MIT decided to measure the bridge using their shortest pledge, Oliver Smoot, as a measuring stick (the bridge is 387.72 Smoots long, for the record). Oliver Smoot, hilariously enough, went on to become head of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and later president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Today, the bridge features slabs that measure one Smooth in length (rather than standard 6-foot slabs) and has painted markers at 10-Smoot intervals ("plus or minus one ear" to denote measurement uncertainty). Twice a year, the fraternity repaints the marks. The original plan was to leave off the 10-smoot marks and to prevent the frat from putting them back on, but once it was revealed that the police actually use Smoots in accident reports, the idea of leaving the Smoot marks on died off.

This is also the bridge where Harry Houdini performed one of his most famous stunts. He had a police officer handcuff his hands behind his back, attach the handcuffs to a collar around his neck, and then he jumped off the bridge. Of course, while he was underwater, he successfully freed himself from his shackles and swam to safety.