Elias Tarabay remembers Aug. 4, 2020, clearly. He arrived home after having a late lunch with a friend. He was living in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. His house had a balcony that looked out at the city’s ports. Just as he settled in, he heard a loud explosion. Tarabay was working as an editor for a local newspaper at the time and he thought he would take the video to send back to his office. Then a second large explosion rocked the Beirut port. The explosion killed at least 214 people, according to official records. Thousands were injured. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history — the result of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate igniting after a fire broke out. The explosion tore through the city with such force that it caused a tremor across the entire country that was heard and felt as far away as the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, more than 200 kilometres away. It would soon emerge in documents that the highly combustible nitrates had been haphaza...