Great: The Charles River is flammable
By adamg - Thu, 09/06/2007 - 5:57pm.
The Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports that five people working on a Charles River cleanup suffered burns when a "taffy-like substance," which they'd hauled aboard their boat, caught fire this afternoon near the Esplanade.
Officials are investigating exactly what the stuff is, but say they doubt it was part of an intentionally explosive device.
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Yeesh...
... linky goodness.
That's just scary. And I was wishing I had a boat to pick up trash in the area above the Watertown dam.
I'm rethinking that idea now.
Do either of you have a source for this story?
My source ...
Was Jake Wark, p.r. person for the Suffolk County DA's office. I saw some video of firefighters at the Charles on Channel 5 last night (their online report).
You can find it with a Web search
Two online sources:
townhall.com/...ignites_in_boston_trash_boat
www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1029873
Cuyahoga River
The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland is also flammable, so sayeth R.E.M. and Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River (first paragraph)
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/rem/coyahoga_20179015.html
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http://proactivebusybody.com
A more famous song about the Cuyahoga
Burn On, by Randy Newman (no relation to me)
Those MIT kids
Globe: MIT prank may have caused minor explosion on Charles River. Specifically, the "whitish, lumpy substance" may have been sodium.
Apparently this is an annual tradition, though I don't remember it from my time there in 1975-79.