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90 years later, N.J. blast still shrouded in mystery
German sabotage believed to be cause of deadly explosionNEW YORK -- The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. People were jolted from bed and windows within 25 miles shattered. The Statue of Liberty, less than a mile away, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. Frightened immigrants on Ellis Island were hastily moved to Manhattan. The epicenter of the blast, a small island called Black Tom, all but disappeared in what was then the largest explosion in the United States, on Sunday, July 30, 1916, at 2:08 a.m. It destroyed about 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships and ultimately destined for the World War I battlefields of France. Evidence pointed to German sabotage, and some historians regard it as the first major terrorist attack on the United States by a foreign party -- 85 years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Marked today by a plaque in New Jersey's Liberty State Park, the blast site lies less than 2 miles from lower Manhattan and within sight of where the World Trade Center towers stood. Posted by: tu3031 2006-07-31 |
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