Chelsea, MassachusettsGranite that crumbledA town fire hot enough to crumble granite. What burns that hot?Reports of the 1908 Chelsea fire say buildings of solid granite crumbled and were entirely destroyed.
Photo: Augustus Koch · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Clues Others Missed · Bangor, Maine, United States
Insurers saw it coming
The open question
Mapped in 1907, burned as mapped in 1911.
On the record
In 1907 the National Board of Fire Underwriters mapped Bangor and predicted a large fire could spread from the area where the 1911 fire later ran.
Sources
More from Clues Others Missed
Chelsea, MassachusettsGranite that crumbledA town fire hot enough to crumble granite. What burns that hot?Reports of the 1908 Chelsea fire say buildings of solid granite crumbled and were entirely destroyed.
Sydney, AustraliaThe fair palace that burned the land recordsOf all the papers to lose, the ones about who held the land first.When the 1879 Garden Palace burned in 1882 it was being used by government departments, and records of squatting occupation in New South Wales were lost.
SeattleCondemned two years before the fairClose the old level, then hold a world's fair. Same pattern as elsewhere?Seattle condemned the Underground in 1907, two years before the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.