Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 6, 2017

The Halifax Explosion was a maritime disaster in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of 6 December 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with high explosives bound for Bordeaux, France, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, at the north-west tip of Halifax Harbour. When a fire on board the French ship ignited her cargo, around 2,000 people were killed by the blast, debris, fires and collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius, including the entire community of Richmond, were obliterated. A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and scattered fragments of Mont-Blanc for kilometres. A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the community of Mi'kmaq First Nations people who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations. The blast was the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 ktonTNT. There are several memorials to the victims of the explosion in the North End of Halifax.