That's Nova Scotia, btw. "These unique PHOTOGRAPHS taken during the First World War by a British sailor show the biggest manmade explosion in history, when two warships crashed into one another, killing 2,000 people. The photos, taken by Royal Navy Lt Victor Magnus, have emerged nearly 100 years after they were taken and show the moment a French and Norwegian ship dramatically collided in what has become known as 'The Halifax Explosion'. During the incident, the SS Mont-Blanc - a ship from France fully loaded with wartime explosives - collided with SS Imo from Norway. The French ship then blew up, nearly wiping out an entire district. During the incident, the SS Mont-Blanc - a ship from France fully loaded with wartime explosives - collided with SS Imo from Norway Experts say the blast was the largest manmade explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons - with an equivalent force of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT. Amateur PHOTOGRAPHER Victor, who was based in Halifax in the Canadian state of Nova Scotia, was said to 'always had a camera around his neck' and was able to grab a series of shots of the original 'big bang'. The photos have now been found by his daughter Ann Foreman, 89, who discovered them among photo albums in a drawer. She had no idea a slice of history had been gathering dust in her home for nearly 100 years. Mrs Foreman, from Hayle in Cornwall, who served in the land army, has now taken them to the Imperial War Museum, London. She said: 'My father was a great PHOTOGRAPHER. He always had a camera around his neck. He would take photos all the time. He never asked anyone to pose or anything. He just snapped away. 'It was just a coincidence that he was at the Halifax disaster. The actual explosion was a massive amount of smoke." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2841066/Unique-photographs-taken-WWI-sailor-biggest-manmade-explosion-history-two-warships-crashed-other.html#ixzz3JZQD9hKN
Interesting...British and Australian Engineers blew up whole hillsides from underneath...a couple of these were described as the biggest explosions of WW1?
I noticed that CAC...it seems to be one of these highly subjective descriptions. Doesn't help that the "journalists" writing the stories are usually just out of Uni and think history started the day they were born.
Nice photos, but not even close to the "largest manmade explosion". The Tsar Bomba would take the first place (around 50MT of TNT). If you're leaving nuclear weapons out, I believe the largest would be the failure and subsequent explosion of the Soviet N1 "moon rocket" in the late 1960s. 10kT of TNT if I recall correctly.