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: Currier and Ives · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Clues Others Missed · Saint John, Canada
The fire foretoldSuspected
The open question
Someone knew, days before. What did he know?
On the record
A schoolboy known only as 'Harry' recorded that on 16 June 1877 an elderly First Nations chief told boys to warn their parents the city would be destroyed on 19 June. It burned on 20 June.
Why it's on the list: A single recorded anecdote; no second source given.
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.