Three Officially Recorded Incidents That Sound Like Bar Stories

Setup: In 1932, Australia sent soldiers armed with machine guns to deal with a large population of emus damaging wheat fields in Western Australia. The birds were eating crops, trampling fences, and generally declining to respect agricultural policy.

Escalation: The military operation immediately became difficult because emus could run quickly, scatter when fired upon, and absorb an astonishing amount of ammunition without becoming meaningfully less emu. One attempted ambush involved a truck-mounted gun whose equipment malfunctioned. Another involved soldiers pursuing birds across rough country while the birds continued their agricultural campaign.

Punchline: After several weeks, the operation was abandoned. The minister responsible later described the emus as having won the war, a sentence that remains difficult to improve upon.

Setup: On January 15, 1919, a storage tank containing more than two million gallons of molasses burst in Boston. A wave of the sticky brown material swept through the neighborhood at an estimated fifteen miles per hour.

Escalation: The molasses damaged buildings, overturned railcars, trapped horses, and killed 21 people. The tank’s owner initially suggested that sabotage was responsible, but investigators found construction problems, including steel that was too thin for the tank’s contents. The resulting lawsuit lasted for years and eventually produced a large settlement.

Punchline: Survivors and rescuers reportedly found the molasses so thick that it hindered movement for days. Boston spent part of the twentieth century with a disaster site that smelled, according to local accounts, like a bakery having a very bad morning.

Setup: The Salmon Act 1986, still part of the law in the United Kingdom, includes an offense concerning the handling of salmon in circumstances that may suggest illegal activity.

Escalation: The wording is real and unusually theatrical: a person may be guilty if they receive, retain, undertake or assist in the retention of a salmon while knowing, or reasonably suspecting, that an offense has been committed in relation to it.

Punchline: Somewhere in the British legal tradition, “Why are you holding that fish?” became a question with evidentiary value.

This Week in Weird History: The emus kept the crops, the molasses kept the smell, and the salmon kept counsel.