Category: Reveal

The Indian Ocean tsunami that struck on 26 December 2004 was among the worst single-instance mass-casualty events in recorded history. Nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries were killed. The fact that this train wreck, which is the largest single rail disaster in world history by death toll, is but a minuscule portion of that larger death count is jarring.

Before the #50 Matara Express departed the Ambalangoda station, railway officials had been trying desperately to contact the station to get them to halt the train. Unfortunately, everyone at the station was helping process the train, and no one was available to take the call until after it left. When it got to Peraliya, the first waves overtook the tracks and stopped the train. Subsequent waves threw the train around like a leaf in the water, crushing those who tried to shelter behind it. The flooding of the cars drowned nearly all of the passengers.

No one really knows how many died in this tragedy. At least 900 have been identified, but it is thought the total death count may be as high as 1700 or more.

Those who located the site, all before the hint, were:

• hhgygy
• Phil Ower
• Gillian B
• Paul Voestermans
• Martin de Bock
• Garfield
• Graham Hedley
• Eloy Cano
• Lighthouse
• Kiribatian Jacob
• Glenmorren

675 soldiers on their way home for a well-deserved Christmas leave from the Italian front of WWI died in a fiery derailment at this bridge. The train was way too heavy for the terrain, so the engineers could not adequately control the speed. The driver was able to slow it down a little from the insane 135km/h down to an untenable 102km/h before the first coach left the track. The ensuing fire was not helped by the fact that many of the soldiers had carried grenades with them. The fire burned all night and most of the next day.

The crash and its aftermath remain the worst non-natural-disaster-related train accident in history.

So far in this series, I’ve been able to find a newspaper clipping describing the tragedy. For this one, there is none. Details of the accident were immediately classified as a military secret. The Wikipedia page says that ‘Le Figaro’ wrote 21 lines about it on 17 December 1917, but I found a site that archives Le Figaro (at least the first 2 pages), and, while my French is not perfect, I did not see the word “Train” anywhere on that.

Those who found the site were:

• Paul Voestermans
• hhgygy
• Glenmorren
• Martin de Bock
• Graham Hedley
• Kiribatian Jacob
• Garfield
• Phil Ower
• Joël
• Lighthouse
• Eloy Cano

And after the hint:

• Gillian B

March 18, 1937. Estimated death toll 295, majority students. At least 300 injured, many for life.

The school board of Rusk County, Texas tried to save some money. Instead of paying the local gas company for natural gas, they tapped a waste gas disposal well coming off of production wells in the East Texas oil fields. This waste gas is essentially the same thing as what they had been paying for, except it was “raw”, meaning it had no additive to give it a noticeable smell as required for gas that was being sold. There were leaks in the pipes that ran the crawl space that ran along the entire building, and gas had been accumulating in that space for some time, no one really knows how long.

On this fateful day, with school let out early, most of the students, and a large number of the parents were still in the building because of a Parent-Teacher Association meeting. It is thought that the vocational education teacher plugged in and turned on an electric sander about 3:15 in the afternoon.

The explosion lifted the entire building and dropped it hard. The structure collapsed on top of the more than 700 people inside. There was no fire, or the death toll would have easily exceeded 500 or more.

Those who found the site before the hint were:

• hhgygy
• Paul Voestermans
• Garfield
• Eloy Cano
• Luís Filipe Miguel
• Phil Ower
• Lighthouse
• Martin de Bock
• Kiribatian Jacob

And after the hint:

• Robin Giles
• Gillian B
• Graham Hedley

For those who want to know how they were supposed to find it via the hint: A direct copy of the hint into the google search would not have found it — don’t ever expect it to (it might some times, but again, don’t expect it to). You would have to apply some deductive reasoning. Cronkite was born in 1916, so he was 20 in 1936 and 1937. A google search of “Walter Cronkite 1937 UP Story” would net you a hit (about halfway down the first page on mine) leading you to the New London story.

As the hint implied, Cameronbridge’s most popular product is not what you would expect since it located in Scotland. Tanqueray is the top-selling brand of gin worldwide. In addition, Gordon’s Gin and Smirnoff Vodka are distilled here. They do distill Scotch Whisky here, namely Haig Club.

Those who found the location, all before the hint were:

• Lighthouse
• Kiribatian Jacob
• Prince Leio
• Wilders
• Sawamura.Eiji
• Martin de Bock
• Eloy Cano (answered it in Scots Gaelic, no less)
• Paul Voestermans
• 800n
• JLPicard
• Phil Ower
• hhgygy
• Garfield
• Ronald
• ExPaTrIaTe RW
• Teemu Pukki
• Roel Cruijff
• Francis B
• Paul Taylor
• TiMeG
• \(^o^)/
• Lizekop
• jeanlouis

The Cascade Brewery is the oldest continuously operating brewery in Australia, or, for that matter, in the southern hemisphere. It was originally founded as a sawmill, and when the operator of the sawmill went to prison, the owner converted it to a brewery, and never looked back.

Today they produce a number of lagers, pale ales, stouts and strong ciders, as well as a number of non-alcoholic juices and syrups. Like most large scale breweries in the world, they have been gobbled up by Anheuser Bush InBev and are now operated under the Carlton & United umbrella.

That critter on the label is the Thylacine, aka “Tasmanian Tiger”. The last known live one was captured in 1933. It was one of the largest carnivorous marsupials ever recorded.

Those who threw back a cold one before the hint were:

• Phil Ower
• hhgygy
• Root007-1
• Paul Voestermans
• Garfield
• MessiasJ
• C-Allo
• cruyff@haag
• Martin de Bock
• Lighthouse
• mark.zitroni
• Belfgaury
• OKleerekoper
• zuurtoren
• Enrico Campelli 33
• Henry8
• Reddy Pat
• MiranDese-12
• Déconne_E
• Ohtani
• Inath Oliver Philip
• Bm_Uds
• Lionheart
• Allan CHARLTON
• Kiribatian Jacob
• AHidalgue

And after the hint:

• Gillian B
• Graham Hedley
• Jollyfellow-15
• birdie
• PPhilipJ
• Maria 57 AUS
• Prince Leio

As you can see by the label above, Concha Y Toro is the winemaker behind Casillero del Diablo or “Devil Locker”. We felt this was appropriate given the contest number and the relevance of that number in many religions.

Casillero is Concho Y Toro’s most popular wine brand.

Those who found it before the hint were:

• Lighthouse
• Garfield
• Graham Hedley
• Paul Voestermans
• Martin de Bock
• Phil Ower

And after the hint:

• hhgygy
• SchwTheo
• SonOfTheBeach
• Béatrice H.
• Nancy Barbato Sinatra
• abc8
• C-Allo
• NL345
• Hans Peter Dumbeau
• Miloš Babiš
• Alexander Willem
• Duncamacleo
• hess

The word “водка” or “vodka” is a diminutive of the Russian word for water, “вода” pronounced “va-da”, and thus loosely translates to “little water”

From 1901 until Russia’s entry into World War I, “Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1” made vodka for internal consumption within Russian borders. Several years after the Bolsheviks came to power, they restarted the factory under the ownership of the Soviet Union. During World War 2, the factory made “Molotov Cocktail” weapons.

No one is completely sure when the first batch of Stolichnaya Vodka was distilled. Some say 1938, others 1946 or 1948. It was introduced to the world at a trade show in Bern, Switzerland in 1953 and won a gold medal there.

In 1972, the PepsiCo Corporation struck a deal with the Soviet government trading the exclusive rights to import and distribute Stoli in the US in exchange with providing Pepsi products for distribution in the Soviet bloc, making Pepsi the first American brand to be marketed to the citizens of the Soviet Union.

The factory kept the name “Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1” until 1987, when it was renamed Krystall.

Those who found this spot were:

• Lighthouse
• Paul Voestermans
• Martin de Bock
• Garfield
• hhgygy
• Eloy Cano
• LdnCdn
• albert.lingot
• Nancy Barbato Sinatra
• Phil Ower
• Graham Hedley
• Luís Filipe Miguel
• abc8
• Melissa
• TheklaO
• Popov12
• Joe B
• Jorrit HendrixxX
• LegoGame
• Kiribatian Jacob

And after the hint:

• Root007-1

In 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England embarked on a tour of Canada. As a tribute to the monarchs, Samuel Bronfman, President and CEO of the company that owned Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, directed the creation of a premium Canadian whiskey, which became Crown Royal.

Known for its distinctive crown-shaped bottle and cap and royal purple cloth bag, Crown Royal quickly became a hit, rising quickly to become the best selling Canadian whiskey worldwide.

While, in the past, it has been also been distilled at plants in Waterloo and Amherstburg, Ontario, today it is exclusively produced at this plant on the shores of Lake Winnipeg.

Those who found the site before the hint were:

• Phil Ower
• Paul Voestermans
• Glenmorren
• Martin de Bock
• Graham Hedley
• Garfield
• Eloy Cano
• hhgygy
• Lighthouse
• Coda45637
• CLOpe
• LuigiLollo
• BurningSoul
• Nancy Barbato Sinatra

And after the hint:

• LawnBoy
• Ashwini Agrawal
• Robin Giles
• Kiribatian Jacob

Legend has it that Jack Daniels hated his safe. He disliked it because the dial was hard to turn, so he was constantly getting the combination wrong. The apocryphal story is that one day, he got so mad that he kicked it hard enough to break his toe, which in time became gangrenous, and eventually killed him (it is true that he died of Sepsis).

His Tennessee Whiskey (it meets the qualifications to be called “bourbon”, but the company simply chooses not to) is one of the best selling non-beer alcoholic beverage brands in the world. You can find Jack Daniels on store shelves all over the world — just not in Lynchburg or anywhere else in Moore County, Tennessee, because Moore County is a “dry” county. After Prohibition ended in the US, counties in Tennessee remained dry by default. Liquor sales could be authorized by a vote of the people in that county — but the county never had such a vote.

Those who found this place were:

• Graham Hedley
• Martin de Bock
• Phil Ower
• hhgygy
• Paul Voestermans
• Root007-1
• Hans1789
• René De La Carte
• Nancy Barbato Sinatra
• MC Solaar
• Борис Карлофф
• MiranDese-12
• John Gospel IV
• Luciano P.
• Garfield
• JimCricket1981
• Walter Schirra
• Kiribatian Jacob

Margaret Laurence is considered one of, if not THE, preeminent authors of Canada. Her series of novels are set in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba, which is a proxy for her home town of Neepawa.

Public Domain, Link

Those who ventured into the “True North Strong and Free” included:

• Glenmorren
• Lighthouse
• Paul Voestermans
• Martin de Bock

and after the hint:

• Phil Ower
• Graham Hedley

And this ends the literary series. We hope you enjoyed it.

Series crowns go to Lighthouse, Paul Voestermans, and Martin de Bock , all with perfect scores. Honorable mention to Phil Ower, who only missed by 1 point, and that point coming on this contest.