This year, the story of that explosion is in the Academy Awards spotlight. "The Flying Sailor" is a film based on the disaster, and it's nominated for an Oscar for best animated short.

Almanac: The Halifax explosion And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: December 6th, 1917, 98 years ago today ... the day an immense explosion wiped out much of the port city of Halifax ...

INSKEEP: So not a great history, but when news of this explosion spread 100 years ago, Massachusetts Governor Samuel McCall sent trainloads of doctors, nurses and medical supplies to Halifax.

Within an hour of the explosion in Halifax, the people of Boston starting sending two trains and two ships with 100 doctors, 300 nurses and $1 million in medical supplies – all without being asked.

However, before J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project were even ideas, the previous superlative for the largest explosion belonged to what started as an accident in the harbor of Halifax ...

In his new book, " The Great Halifax Explosion," author John U. Bacon has tracked the disaster in Halifax a century ago to the celebratory annual tree lighting in Boston.

The streets of Halifax in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, 1917. (Canadian Force via Twitter) In Boston, Americans got to work on an effort to send aid as fast as possible.

In December 1917, a cargo ship carrying explosives detonated near the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. In his book, [The Great Halifax Explosion], John U. Bacon chronicles the events leading up ...