A closer look
When a munitions ship exploded in Halifax harbor in 1917, the shockwave shattered virtually every window in the city. Since everyone had been staring out their windows at the burning ship, the disaster caused an unprecedented epidemic of horrific eye injuries. Local doctors suddenly had a grim surplus of patients with glass shrapnel in their corneas, forcing them to pioneer entirely new surgical techniques on the fly. This morbid silver lining essentially birthed the modern subspecialty of blast ophthalmology out of sheer, bloody necessity.
