Today in 1957, a watershed moment for the community of Norwood, Ontario.
Their municipal water tower, which looked like a big can of soda or beer, suddenly turned into a big crushed can of soda or beer.
This may have been a crushing blow to people in town, because locals had approved building the tower less than a decade before, and there had been some pretty vocal opposition to the project.
It was 60 feet tall and looked sort of like a big silver can of an energy drink today.
It could hold about 125,000 gallons of water, at least in its uncrushed form.
But people woke up that October morning to find their faucets weren’t putting out any water.
And one side of the tower looked like it had caved in.
There were plenty of theories about what had happened.
The Peterborough Examiner newspaper says there was even a rumor that a flying saucer had collided with the tower, and my alternate theory was that a giant had walked through town, chugged the water tower like a can and then smashed it on her forehead.
But the truth soon came to light.
Some young people in town (and from what I could find, we still don’t know which ones) decided to pull off a pre-Halloween prank by opening up a bunch of the local fire hydrants, one after the other.
They were able to pull this off without anyone noticing because it had been raining heavily, and people weren’t surprised to see water all around.
But so much water came out of the hydrants, and by extension the tower, so quickly that the air vent at the top jammed.
That led to a vacuum effect that caved in the sides of the tank.
Norwood’s water tower looked like a 60 foot tall piñata – but it was a piñata that stayed in use for another three decades or so.
After all, they’d put a lot of time and work and money into building the tower, so why just pull it down?
The dents kept engineers busy over all those years, but the tower kept working until Norwood got a larger, undented replacement in 1993… at which point you have to think some people started complaining about how they missed the old tower, right?
Starting Saturday at Coarsegold Historic Village, near Yosemite National Park, it’s the Coarsegold Tarantula Awareness Festival.
It’s a chance to learn a little bit more about these arachnids at a time of year when they’re out and about in the area.
That’s not because it’s Halloween, it’s their mating season.
Norwood: Norwood once had a crushed beer can water tower (Peterborough Examiner)
Coarsegold Tarantula Awareness Festival (Yosemite This Year)
