MMM: http://www.texas-city-tx.org/docs/exp.htm (http://www.texas-city-tx.org/docs/exp.htm)
Oppau, (Germany), September 21, 1921.
The BASF plant at Oppau was manufacturing Mischsaltz, a 50/50 mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate. This fertilizer tends to cake like conventional ammonitrates. Standard practice at the plant was to break these heaps into manageable blocks, using explosives. At the time of the catastrophe, this had been done more than 20,000 times. The storage involved that day contained 4,500 tons of fertilizer (it was estimated that only about 450 tons exploded). It is assumed that the last cartridge exploded in a region of the mass where the density was lower than usual (because of recent changes in the production) and where the ammonium nitrate concentration in the Mischsaltz was higher than average. The important influence of these changes on the sensitivity of the product had not been realized. It was shown later that the sensitivity of Mischsaltz to explosion trigger increases rapidly with increasing ammonium nitrate concentration. This fact also explains why only part of the storage exploded. The catastrophe made 500 deaths.
http://www.sfc.fr/Guiochon%20VO/exinvolontaireVO.htm (http://www.sfc.fr/Guiochon%20VO/exinvolontaireVO.htm)
And to scare you all a little more, AN can even detonate when dissolved in water (a 83% solution in this case):
http://www.uneptie.org/pc/apell/disasters/toulouse/other_accidents.htm (http://www.uneptie.org/pc/apell/disasters/toulouse/other_accidents.htm)
http://www.epa.gov/swercepp/pubs/terrasum.html (http://www.epa.gov/swercepp/pubs/terrasum.html)
And that's the latest known big accident involving AN, on 9-21-2001:
(some people thought it was a terrorist attack)
http://www.uneptie.org/pc/apell/disasters/toulouse/ (http://www.uneptie.org/pc/apell/disasters/toulouse/)
I'm not fat just horizontally disproportionate.