October 20, 1944: Keeping the promise he made 2 1/2 years earlier, General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines, landing at Leyte Gulf. It will take until April 13, 1945 to get all Japanese troops out of the country. I have a separate entry for that event.
Also on this day, in Europe, the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade is liberated from the Fascists by Yugoslav Partisans. The following year, a professional soccer team will be named for them: Football Klub Partizan Belgrade.
But it's not all a good day: A gas leak causes an explosion that destroys a square mile of the East Side of Cleveland, killing 131 people.
The East Ohio Gas Company built a full-scale commercial liquid natural gas (LNG) plant in Cleveland in 1940, just after a successful pilot plant was built by its sister company, Hope Natural Gas Company of West Virginia. The stored liquid was regasified, and put into the mains when cold snaps hit and extra capacity was needed. Formerly, some customers' gas service was curtailed during a cold snap.
At 2:30 PM, the cylindrical above-ground storage tank Number 4 began to emit a vapor that poured from a seam on the side of the tank, near Lake Erie on East 61st Street, and winds from the lake pushed the vapor into a mixed-use section of Cleveland, where it dropped into the sewer lines via the catch basins located in the street gutters.
As the gas mixture flowed and mixed with air and sewer gas, the mixture ignited. In the ensuing explosion, manhole covers launched skyward as jets of fire erupted from depths of the sewer lines. One cover was found several miles east, in the Cleveland neighborhood of Glenville.
At first it was thought that the disaster was contained, and spectators returned home thinking that the matter was being taken care of by the fire department. But at 3:00, another above-ground tank exploded, leveling the tank farm. The explosions and fires continued to occur, trapping many who had returned to what they thought was the safety of their own homes. Housewives who were at home suddenly found their homes engulfed in flame as the explosion traveled through the sewers and up through drains.
The toll could have been significantly higher had the event occurred after local schools had let out and working parents returned to their homes for the evening. In all, 225 persons were injured; over 700 people were left homeless, and 79 homes, two factories, numerous cars, and miles of underground infrastructure were destroyed.
Following the disaster, utility companies and communities began to rethink their natural gas storage systems, and below-ground storage of natural gas grew in popularity.
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October 20, 1944 was a Friday. Baseball season had ended 11 days earlier, with the St. Louis Cardinals defeating their landlords at Sportsman's Park, the St. Louis Browns. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season wouldn't begin for another 8 days. And the NFL was in midweek. But there were 4 games in college football that night:
* In a rare college football version of the New York City vs. New England sports rivalry, Boston College beat New York University, 42-13 at Fenway Park. Until Alumni Stadium was built in 1957, BC played wherever they could get a playing date, and also played at Braves Field and Harvard Stadium, in addition to their on-campus Alumni Field, which Alumni Stadium would replace. NYU played its home games at Ohio Field in The Bronx, with games too big for that 12,000-seat facility moved across the Borough to Yankee Stadium.
* The University of Kentucky beat Virginia Military Institute, 26-9 at McLean Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky. Although VMI was (and is) a military school, this was not an example of a regular college football team struggling to find games due to the manpower drain of World War II, and settling for playing the college-age players on military bases. But there were many such games, in both World Wars, and these last 2 were among them:
* The team at the U.S. Army's Fort Pierce, in the town of the same name, north of Miami, beat the University of Miami, 38-0 at Burdine Stadium in Miami. In 1959, Burdine Stadium would be renamed for its biggest annual event: The Orange Bowl.
* And the University of Georgia beat Daniel Field, 57-6 at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia. Daniel Field was a U.S. Army Air Forces base in Augusta, Georgia.
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